1. In journalism, there is a term known as fact-checking.

2. When a columnist puts a person’s words in quotes, that represents a fact, which ought to be checked.

3. The quote attributed to me in Paul Krugman’s column was not a quote. It was a distorted paraphrase

4. A similar paraphrase to the one Krugman used has been used by others to portray me as a racist.

5. See for yourself what I actually said.
UPDATE:

Below is an unofficial transcript (from a commenter). It should be checked against the actual video.

Thank you. I’d like to thank the sponsors of this conference for inviting me to speak. I think about what’s going on, what’s happening today, as an economist, but I feel it as a father. My wife and I have three daughters, aged between 19 and 25, and when I see what’s being done to their future, I am really angry. Back in September, when they were talking about taking $700 billion to “unclog the financial system,” I wanted to take Henry Paulson and *yank* him out of the TV screen and say, “You keep your hands off my daughters’ future!” But he got away with it. And I had to — for me it was like sitting there watching my house being ransacked by a gang of thugs. And now we’ve got a new gang of thugs, and they’re going to do the same thing. So, anyway, that’s how I feel, we’ll go back to how I think.

The video of the full conference is here.