Federal stimulus programs designed to kick-start the economy can't be labeled as failures because in reality, they never led to a surge in public spending, says Nobel economist Paul Krugman. Despite claims that government spending is out of control, when taking into account cutbacks at the state and local levels, there haven't been out-of-proportion hikes in public spending via stimulus programs during the last decade. "Whatâs extraordinary about all this is that stimulus canât have failed, because it never happened," Krugman writes in his New York Times column. "Once you take state and local cutbacks into account, there was no surge of government spending." http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/paul-Krugman-Stimulus-Didnt/2011/02/16/id/386333