Paul Krugman at Netroots Nation 2012 this Saturday morning: If You Don’t Know Someone Suffering Financially, You Must Be A Romney:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Saturday morning called the current state of the U.S. economy “incredibly awful.”

“If you don’t know multiple people who are suffering, then you must be living in a very rarefied environment,” he said in a brief address to the Netroots Nation conference. “You must be maybe a member of the Romney clan, or something.”

Krugman is out with a new book, “End This Depression Now!”, and he told the progressive gathering that the country’s economic problems are solvable.

“None of this has to be happening. We didn’t have a plague of locusts, we were not hit by a tsunami, there wasn’t some act of God that created this terrible situation. It was acts of man.”

Krugman, who has seen an advance copy of his newspaper’s review of “End This Depression,” dinged the Times’ book review editor. [...]

Krugman concluded that Americans are living under the tyranny of “very serious people” — people like Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, he said. “Solving this depression is not fundamentally an economic problem, it’s a political problem.”

From this year's Netroots Nation, here's Elizabeth Warren from this Friday evening: Elizabeth Warren On Why Corporations Are Not People: ‘People Have Hearts’:

But she sounded a confident — though raspy — note during her address to thousands of Netroots Nation progressives here Friday. “It was not the convention that did it to me, it was the parties,” Warren said of her hoarse voice. Warren on June 2 avoided a Democratic primary at the state party convention, winning a historic 96 percent of the delegates.

Progressives who have any doubt where Mitt Romney, Brown and their supporters stand, Warren said at Netroots, should consider: Romney wants to repeal financial reform, says that people who are concerned about income inequality are envious and claims that corporations are people.

“No, Mitt, corporations are not people,” Warren said, to applause. “People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they love, they cry, they dance, they live and they die. Learn the difference.”

Warren, who helped conceive and establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said financial markets need one set of rules to ensure a level playing field. “Progressives understand that markets are like football,” she said. “Every game needs rules, a referee with a whistle to enforce those rules. Without rules and a ref, it isn’t football, it’s a mugging.”

Warren later rejected the notion that the climate in Washington can prevent any actual reform — and jabbed her Republican opponent for reportedly shielding banks after voting for a Wall Street overhaul in 2010.

“That has now come to light, and it’s time for the American people to re-engage on this and say, ‘No more,’” Warren told TPM. “I don’t see this as a climate in Washington. I see this as a climate in the whole country.”

From NetrootsNationVideo and their channel on You Tube:

Darcy Burner gives a keynote at the Friday mid day plenary, "2012 and the War on (and for) Women" Netroots Nation 2012 in Providence, Rhode Island.

Here's more from their recap on KOS: Recap: 2012 and the War on (and for) Women.

Our sister site, Occupy America, is offering livestreaming from Netroots Nation.