Paul Krugman is probably not having a good week.

Krugman is the perennially grumpy op-ed columnist for the so-called "newspaper of record," The New York Times, and author of the just-out best seller, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century" (W.W. Norton and Co.).

The book, whose premise essentially is that George Bush inaugurated the end of America, easily unravels.

Krugman's book is a repeat — literally — of his Times op-ed columns, which tend to center on the evil of George Bush, the evil of everybody who has met George Bush and the evils of capitalism.

Krugman seems to see the Clinton years as a sort of Utopia, but that with the election of Bush ". . . it all went wrong." He says his book is here to explain how and why it's possible "for a country with so much going for it to go downhill so fast." He writes that his book is "in particular an indictment of George W. Bush." He argues that the "revolutionary power" in charge in Washington doesn't like America as it is, and these folks may really want to make American elections "only a formality." Huh?

Needless to say, Krugman describes an America that the vast majority of Americans wouldn't recognize (except maybe those in ivory towers like Princeton, where Krugman teaches economics).

Anyway, here's why Krugman may be having a bad week, and why no one should claim too loudly, as Krugman does, to have a crystal clear crystal ball.

Krugman's life-thesis largely revolves around the coming economic catastrophe, caused by the Bush tax cuts. Only, news flash: Those tax cuts are causing economic growth instead.

Here's what appeared on Page 2 of Tuesday's Wall Street Journal:

"The Commerce Department reported that consumer spending rose by a robust 0.8 percent in August from July, following a 0.9 percent increase the month before." If sustained through September it will mean "the largest quarterly spending increase since 1985."

That's right, 1985. The Journal quotes Steven Wood, an economist with Insight Economics, saying that "massive tax relief has boosted disposable income and real consumer spending." The Journal reports that calculations by Mark Zandi, chief economist with Economy.

com, show it wasn't just the tax rebate checks that hit mailboxes in August causing this good news, but the fact that personal income tax rates have been lowered, too.

The question of whether or not consumers would spend their tax savings to any effect has now been settled. Duh.

But wait — what about employment? Hasn't George Bush lost us almost 3 three million jobs — and counting — as Krugman and other liberals claim?

No. The real story, which even Krugman's own newspaper the New York Times recently reported, is that government job figures rely on the increasingly faulty Establishment Survey, in which a sample of existing businesses are asked how many people they employ. But this count completely misses new businesses and the self-employed where the job growth often is, and also means that if someone leaves two part-time jobs to take one good job, for instance, it's still counted as a "job loss."