Paul Krugman and Robin Wells assess the various explanations for what caused the financial crisis and come to their own conclusions in a piece for the New York Review of Books. They also take a stab at explaining why the recovery has been so lackluster. It won’t surprise you to learn that they see the poor recovery as being caused by a lack of demand driven by people paying off debt at every level of the economy, and that continued deficit spending by the government is the only thing that will see us through. Despite other explanations, it seems pretty obvious at this point that lack of demand is what’s slowing recovery, and that the real debate is over whether it’s preferable for governments to spend more money and risk inflation down the road, or to let more people suffer because they don’t have jobs right now.