As many of us have noted, it’s hugely unfair when people claim that Greece has done nothing to adjust. On the contrary, it has imposed incredibly harsh austerity and substantial reforms on other fronts. Yet you might be tempted to argue that the results show that Greece hasn’t done enough — after all, last year it was running only a tiny primary budget surplus (that is, not counting interest), and this year it has slipped back into primary deficit. So more adjustment is needed, right?

Well, step back for a minute and imagine that we weren’t talking about Greece but about the U.S. or the UK. When we look at our budgets, we normally focus not on the headline budget balance but on the cyclically adjusted balance — an estimate of what it would be at more or less full employment. This helps avoid pressure to pursue procyclical policies that make the economy unstable, and also gives a better idea of the long-run sustainability of the position. And while cyclical adjustment can be controversial, there are standard estimates from third parties like the IMF and the OECD.

So here’s a picture you probably haven’t seen: the IMF’s estimates of the cyclically adjusted primary balances of eurozone countries in 2014:

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Greece is, by this measure, the most fiscally responsible, indeed crazily austere, nation in Europe.

So why is it in fiscal crisis? Because the economy is deeply depressed.

Suppose that there were a way to end this depression. Then Greece’s fiscal problems would melt away, with no need for further cuts. But is there any way to do that?

The answer is, not as long as Greece remains in the euro. It can pursue reforms that might make it more competitive, but anyone promising dramatic, quick results has no idea what he is talking about.

On the other hand, Grexit would produce a rapid improvement in competitiveness, at the cost of possible financial chaos.This is not a route anyone has been willing to go down, but one does have to say that as the crisis worsens it becomes a more plausible outcome.

The thing to understand, in any case, is that if Grexit does come, fiscal issues will immediately cease to be central to the story. Instead, it will all be about handling bank panic, managing the transition to a new currency, and possibly removing structural obstacles to increased exports (which would very much include tourism).

In truth, this has never been a fiscal crisis at its root; it has always been a balance of payments crisis that manifests itself in part in budget problems, which have then been pushed onto the center of the stage by ideology.

The path toward non-Grexit — toward Greece and its creditors reaching a deal that keeps it in the euro — is getting narrower, although it’s not yet completely closed. I’ve been reticent on the subject, for fear of adding my bit to the crisis atmosphere, and I still intend to keep it cool. But there are a few things that seem to need saying.

First, the first line of defense against euro exit has been overrun. Way back when Barry Eichengreen made an argument many of us found persuasive, namely that no country would dare even hint at leaving the euro because such a move would trigger “the mother of all financial crises” as everyone raced to pull funds out of banks. As some of us noted, however, this would become moot if the financial crisis and bank runs happened in advance, Argentine style, forcing the imposition of capital controls and other measures.

As it turned out, the Argentine scenario was headed off by the political determination of elites to stay in the euro and the success of the ECB’s “whatever it takes” declaration of willingness to act as lender of last resort. But the reprieve wasn’t permanent; in this respect, at least, Athens 2015 is Buenos Aires 2001. Financial stability is already greatly compromised, so the costs of thinking about the formerly unthinkable have fallen.

How did we get to this point? Nothing fills me with quite as much despair as the persistence of the story line that it’s all about continuing Greek fecklessness, that the Greeks haven’t done anything. In fact, Greece has imposed almost inconceivable pain on itself. Here’s a comparison between Greece and Spain, the current favorite son of the austerity camp (although the Spaniards themselves aren’t impressed):

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The problem has been that severe spending cuts in an economy with no independent monetary policy and no ability to devalue lead to severe economic contraction, which in turn means that a large part of what’s gained fiscally at the front end gets lost via reduced revenue. This isn’t the fault of the Greeks, it’s basically a design flaw in the euro itself.

Many people — myself included — thought that TPP would, in the end, follow the model of NAFTA: a Democratic president would push the agreement through Congress, but the bulk of the votes would be Republican. But it doesn’t seem to be going that way. Why?

Lydia DePillis suggests that procedural differences and the changed political environment are what changed. Maybe. But I’d suggest three additional factors.

First, while non-trade issues like dispute settlement and intellectual property already loomed large in NAFTA, it was nonetheless more of a genuine trade agreement than TPP — it was, or was perceived as by all sides, to an important degree about the integration of Mexican manufacturing into a North American industrial complex. This meant that conventional trade analysis seemed much more relevant than it does in the current dispute, where economists who try to lecture us about comparative advantage end up looking ridiculously out of touch.

Despite this, the real case for NAFTA involved foreign policy — which is also true for TPP (administration officials tell me that it’s really about geopolitics.) But that case was much more compelling for NAFTA, which was about rewarding Mexican reformers. In 1993, the risk that rejecting NAFTA would provoke an anti-US backlash and empower radicals seemed real and concrete. By contrast, geopolitical arguments for TPP are vague and nonspecific, involving prestige and influence and supposed Asian perceptions. Maybe so, but hard to sell (and why should we trust such claims?)

Finally, I think it’s fair to say that the liberal intelligentsia has been somewhat radicalized by Republican extremism; making common cause with those who share your basic values matters more than it seemed to a couple of decades ago. (And they wonder why the White House doesn’t see this.) Yes, I’m partly talking about myself, but it’s much broader than that; even Larry Summers is at best praising TPP with faint damns, so that most of his recent columns read more like a brief against the agreement than one in support.

So it really is a different game, and TPP supporters need to realize that old rules no longer apply.

Others are picking up on the sheer amazingness — make that amazingness! — of Jeb! citing the record of bubble-era Florida as proof of his skill in economic management. Jim Tankersley adds some data to the picture. But I think there are a couple of additional important points to make here.

First, how does the overall Florida record look now that the dust from the bursting bubble has settled? (Yes, that’s a horrible mixed metaphor. So sue me.) It’s actually kind of startling. Start from 1998, the year Jeb! was elected governor, and compare it with the US as a whole (the red line):

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Florida fell into a deep slump when the bubble burst, much worse than the nation as a whole — and it has still not made up all the lost ground, so that Florida’s growth rate over the past 16 years is just 1.7 percent, slightly below the national average. This is even more remarkable when you bear in mind that the economy of a favored retirement destination should be growing faster than that of the rest of an aging nation.

Second, it could have been much worse. I’ve long argued that it’s useful to compare Florida with Spain — both warm places that experienced huge housing bubbles and suffered badly when the bubbles burst. Florida, however, had a much milder slump. Why? Fiscal integration: major programs, especially Social Security and Medicare, are paid for by the federal government, so that Florida in effect received large-scale aid when its economy and hence tax payments plunged but federal benefits just kept on coming.

But notice why that happened: it’s because of the big New Deal and Great Society programs, the ones Jeb!’s party wants to privatize and eventually kill. So not only did Jeb!’s supposed economic success consist of nothing besides presiding over a giant bubble; the only thing that kept the bubble from causing utter catastrophe was his state’s lucky dependence on big government.

And that, I think, really does warrant an exclamation point.

The big question about the supposed Republican frontrunner is “Jeb! Why???” What does he have to offer? What does he stand for?

Well, yesterday we got a sort of answer: he’s going to run as the candidate of economic growth, which he claims to know something about because as governor of Florida he had the honor of presiding over a huge housing bubble. But it’s an even odder choice of themes than this fact implies.

First of all, isn’t it weird how conservatives have convinced themselves that they have the secrets of growth? It’s as if a bunch of guys who are only 5’7″ (my height, btw) were running around in the firm belief that they’re all 6’2″. Nothing at all in the historical record supports this belief. Here’s the growth in real GDP under several presidents:

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In case you’re wondering, Obama is below Bush at this point, but since Bush ended with a severe recession that continued into Obama’s first year, it’s almost certain that the full 8-year growth will be higher under the current president.

But Jeb! isn’t just drawing on the general conservative growth delusion. He’s piggybacking completely on his brother’s institute, which has a much-derided 4-percent growth project. FYI, the institute’s founding executive director was James K. Glassman, described by the Bush Center’s site as having “written three books on investing.” Indeed, and one of those books was “Dow 36,000.”

So Jeb! insists that he’s not his brother — he’s even replaced his last name with a punctuation mark — and is portrayed by sympathetic reporters as the serious, wonky member of the family that must not be named. But the best he can come up with in his campaign launch is some lukewarm leftovers from his brother’s already pretty sad excuse for a research institute.

Update: According to Politico, the 4 percent project was Jeb!’s idea. OK, but still pretty sad.

This has to be one of the laziest campaigns ever.

It’s tempting! to ridicule! Jeb Bush! over his ludicrous campaign logo! But it would be wrong.

He should, instead, be ridiculed over his ludicrous, self-aggrandizing economic claims.

Incredibly, Jeb! is running on his economic record as governor of Florida, on the claim that he knows how to create growth — 4 percent growth, no less — because of the way Florida prospered during his term in office:

We made Florida number one in job creation and number one in small business creation. 1.3 million new jobs, 4.4 percent growth, higher family income, eight balanced budgets, and tax cuts eight years in a row that saved our people and businesses 19 billion dollars.

During those years, of course, Florida experienced the mother of all housing bubbles — and when the bubble burst (luckily for Jeb! just after he left office) it promptly wiped out 900,000 of those 1.3 million jobs:

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So Jeb! is basically promising that as president, he can generate Florida-style bubbles, which bring disaster when they burst, to the rest of America!

And not incidentally, you might think that the debacle in Kansas would finally kill any notion that conservatives know the secrets of rapid growth. I know, derp abides, but still.

Consider, if you will, the contrast. Hillary Clinton has come under some criticism over the question of whether she really has a plan to achieve her populist agenda. Are there really policies that can reverse the rise in inequality? Could she get them through Congress?

But Jeb! is living in a world of pure fantasy, in which supply-side policies can produce economic miracles despite abundant evidence that they do no such thing. He’s even put a ludicrous number on the goal — 4 percent growth, which nobody has any idea how to achieve.

This is a lot funnier than his adventures in punctuation.

Nate Cohn notes Jeb Bush’s failure to nail down the GOP nomination, or even to establish himself as the candidate of the Republican “moderates” (I think we always need scare quotes in this context). Jeb is nowhere close to even having the kind of position Mitt Romney had at this stage.

Cohn thinks this is surprising. But may I suggest that we consider the candidate? Why, exactly, is Jeb Bush someone the Republican establishment should coalesce around?

True, he has name recognition — but not the kind you want. Time was that conservative writers fawned over Jeb’s supposed stellar management of the Florida economy, but we now know that it was nothing but a giant housing bubble. What he did do was bring a new intensity of crony capitalism to the state, and in general he has a lot of business career explaining to do.

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Say what you like about Mitt Romney — and there isn’t much that liberals should like — he was at least a successful businessman, someone who managed the Olympics well, and for that matter a successful health care reformer even if he ran away from his own achievement. What, other than his now double-edged family connections, does Bush bring to the table?

Some readers have noted that I haven’t said much about the Greek crisis in the past few days. Indeed. It’s crunch time, and right now everyone involved needs to engage in quiet, cool deliberation. There’s really nothing more outsiders can say, at least in public, that we haven’t already said. So it seems to me that for now I should hold back a bit.

This has been a weekend for political surprises. First, of course, was the shocking rejection of TPP by House Democrats. Second was Hillary Clinton’s unexpectedly liberal/populist campaign-launching speech on Roosevelt Island.

What was the third? The pundit reaction to HRC’s speech, which so far, as I read it, has been mostly … positive.

Those of us who remember past campaigns have operated under the working assumption that Clinton Rules will apply in this campaign — that on any question of behavior or motivation Hillary will be assumed guilty, held to standards nobody else faces, accused of mendacity even when the facts clearly support her. It’s still a good guess that coverage will revert to type.

But first-round commentary on yesterday’s speech was remarkably OK, even appreciative of the policy substance.

It’s very strange. What’s going on?