Anyone remember the “Misery Index” from the 1970s—the combination of inflation and unemployment that Jimmy Carter used with great effect against Gerald Ford in the 1976 election (only to have it be deployed with even greater effect against himself by Ronald Reagan four years later)? The Misery Index was the brainchild of the late economist Arthur Okun. Right now, because the official unemployment rate remains very low and inflation has come down from its near 9 percent high last year, the Misery Index is fairly modest compared to the 1970s.

But not so fast. Lawrence Summers, the liberal economist, former Treasury Secretary, and former president of Harvard, combines with three other economists on a new Working Paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and it blows Krugman to smithereens. In one sentence, the paper notes changes since the 1970s in the methodology by which inflation is calculated that vastly understates the real inflation rate for many American consumers—especially anyone using credit or buying a house or car. And this is the reason many consumers are sour on the economy.