Given that these are difficult times, one must turn to comic relief and nearly every Monday and Friday, Paul Krugman comes through. Today’s column about the mythical 3 a.m. call that a president would get regarding hedge funds about to fail is in that category.

Now, I have no problem with his criticisms of McCain, although I would say that McCain is skewered much more thoroughly on this blog than in anything Krugman writes. His comments on Obama, however, provide the first of many moments of laughs:

So what do we know about the readiness of the two men most likely to end up taking that call? Well, Barack Obama seems well informed and sensible about matters economic and financial.

Yes, the same Barack Obama whose combined energy and “stimulus plans” amount to his call to confiscate the entire profits of the oil and gas industries and send each American family $1,000 to pay for the oil and gas (that would be next-to-nonexistent if his plan were to succeed). But, as they say on the late-night commercials, “Wait! There’s more”!

About Mr. Obama: it’s a shame that he didn’t show more leadership in the debate over the bailout bill, choosing instead to leave the issue in the hands of Congressional Democrats, especially Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. But both Mr. Obama and the Congressional Democrats are surrounded by very knowledgeable, clear-headed advisers, with experienced crisis managers like Paul Volcker and Robert Rubin always close at hand.

Yes, Frank and Dodd have been bastions of wisdom throughout the ages, serving as the main shills for Fannie and Freddie and the mantra of “affordable housing.” (Earth to Krugman: When the bubble forced the price of a typical $150K house to something around a half-million, can you explain how that is termed “affordable”?)

Of course, the guiding hand of the “experts,” especially those “experts” who got us into trouble in the first place, is just what we need. Now, I doubt that Volcker and Rubin are doing anything but giving wise oversight, just as Rubin did when he was Secretary of the Treasury and overseeing the stock bubble in the late 1990s.

Krugman does make a semi-true statement here:

Now, to a large extent the poor quality of Mr. McCain’s advisers reflects the tattered intellectual state of his party. Has there ever been a more pathetic economic proposal than the suggestion of House Republicans that we try to solve the financial crisis by eliminating capital gains taxes? (Troubled financial institutions, by definition, don’t have capital gains to tax.)

Even when he is right, however, he still is wrong. First, the Republicans are intellectually bankrupt, but we already knew that. Second, when the government is running Roman orgy deficits, another round of faux “tax cuts” does not exactly solve the problem at hand.

Still, Krugman apparently does not recognize that taxes create their own sets of incentives, and since the tax code cruelly taxes savings and normal investments (as opposed to throwing one’s money after bogus mortgage securities), it would seem that disincentives to saving really do exist with the present tax code. Krugman, from what I remember, believes that the capital gains tax is not high enough, but, then, Keynesians like Krugman believe that the printing press really is the Source of Wealth.

Krugman, being the great comedian that he is, leaves the best line for the end:

And then he found a new set of villains — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored lenders. (Despite some real scandals at Fannie and Freddie, they played little role in causing the crisis: most of the really bad lending came from private loan originators.) And he moralistically accused other politicians, including Mr. Obama, of being under Fannie’s and Freddie’s financial influence; it turns out that a firm owned by his own campaign manager was being paid by Freddie until just last month.

Given that there does not exist enough cyberspace in the world to deal fully with this statement, let me say that Krugman — who has been the Eternal Defender of Fannie and Freddie, second only to Frank and Dodd — pretty much exposes his ignorance here. The reason that these lenders could throw out new mortgages with ever-increasing appraisals and “teaser” rates of interest was because they were told that Fannie and Freddie were backstopping them. Fannie and Freddie really were the proverbial “man behind the curtain,” except that people really were listening to them.

But, in Krugman World, private businesses always are irresponsible “profit-seekers,” but the government — or at least government in a Democratic administration — always is wise and far-seeing. And, if he can defend this current bailout and if he can defend Fannie and Freddie even after they are exposed, then there really is no hope for this guy. None. He is a fraud.