Paul Krugman burns 'phony' Mike Pence to the ground for suddenly having no problems with deficits now that Trump is president

In a series of tweets, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman scalded Vice President Mike Pence -- and other Republican deficit hawks  -- who have suddenly had a change of heart about running up the national debt as long as it keeps the economy humming and makes Donald Trump look good.

According to the New York Times columnist, Pence and other GOP lawmakers are quick to raise alarms about ballooning deficits when Democrats are in control but shrug their shoulders when the shoe is on the Republican foot.

Linking to a Washington Post article about Pence defending Trump's desire that the Fed manipulate interest rates to his liking, Krugman stated, "OK, for once GOP cynicism has surprised me."

"I always knew that Republican 'deficit hawks' were phonies, that they would suddenly decide that deficits were no problem as soon as we had an R president. But I though the hard-money thing was real," he wrote. "The reason I thought it was real was that cranky old Fox-watching men are, in fact, natural goldbugs constantly fearing that socialists will inflate away their hard-earned hoards. I get far more hate mail when I write about monetary policy than when I write about politics."

The ecomonmist added, "But it turns out that bad faith can move mountains: people who wanted to raise interest rates when unemployment was 9 percent want to cut them with unemployment at 3.6%, as long as Trump is in power."

You can see the tweets below: