Paul Krugman: Trending quotes (page 4)

When asked to define the economic policy of the Bush administration in a BuzzFlash interview http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/09/11_krugman.html, 11 September 2003

Problem

“Now I’m not saying that Keynes was right about everything, that we should treat The General Theory as a sort of secular bible - the way that Marxists treat Das Kapital. But the essential truth of Keynes’s big idea - that even the most productive economy can fail if consumers and investors spend too little, that the pursuit of sound money and balanced budgets is sometimes (not always!) folly rather than wisdom - is as evident in today’s world as it was in the 1930s. And in these dangerous days, we ignore or reject that idea at the world economy’s peril.”

Paul Krugman

"Why aren't we all Keynesians yet?", Fortune (Aug. 3, 1998)

Wisdom , Money , Truth , World

“It is a bit funny, but also quite sad: Those who preach the doctrine of global glut are tilting at windmills, when there are some real monsters out there that need slaying.”

Paul Krugman

"Is Capitalism Too Productive?", Foreign Affairs (September/October 1997)

Sadness

“As is often the case with major disputes in economics, the argument over fiscal policy went on for years, with some critics of fiscal policy still defending their position when this book went to press. It seems fair, however, to say that among economists a more or less Keynesian view of the effects of fiscal policy came to prevail. Careful statistical studies at the International Monetary Fund and else where showed that austerity policies have historically been followed by contraction, not expansion. Recent experience, in which countries like Spain and Greece that were forced into severe austerity also experienced severe slumps, seemed to confirm that observation. Furthermore, it was clear that those who had predicted a sharp rise in U. S. interest rates due to budget deficits, leading to conventional crowding out, had been wrong: U. S. long-term interest rates remained near record lows even during the years from 2009 to 2012, when the government ran very large deficits.”

Paul Krugman

Source: Economics (4th ed., 2015), Chapter 33. Macroeconomics: Events and Ideas

Books , Study , Country

“The kind of economic trouble that Asia experienced a decade ago, and that we're all experiencing now, is precisely the sort of thing we thought we had learned to prevent. In the bad old days big, advanced economies with stable governments-like Britain in the 1920s-might have had no answer to prolonged periods of stagnation and deflation; but between John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, we thought we knew enough to keep that from happening again.”

Paul Krugman

Introduction
The Return of Depression Economics and The Crisis of 2008 (2009)

Learning

“The usual and basic Keynesian answer to recessions is a monetary expansion. But Keynes worried that even this might sometimes not be enough, particularly if a recession had been allowed to get out of hand and become a true depression. Once the economy is deeply depressed, households and especially firms may be unwilling to increase spending no matter how much cash they have, they may simply add any monetary expansion to their board. Such a situation, in which monetary policy has become ineffective, has come to be known as a "liquidity trap"; Keynes believed that the British and American economies had entered such a trap by the mid-1930s, and some economists believed that the United States was on the edge of such a tap in 1992.
The Keynesian answer to a liquidity trap is for the government to do what the private sector will not: spend. When monetary expansion is ineffective, fiscal expansion—such as public works programs financed by borrowing—must take its place. Such a fiscal expansion can break the vicious circle of low spending and low incomes, "priming the pump: and getting the economy moving again. But remember that this is not by any means an all-purpose policy recommendation; it is essentially a strategy of desperation, a dangerous drug to be prescribed only when the usual over-the-counter remedy of monetary policy has failed.”

Paul Krugman book Peddling Prosperity

Source: Peddling Prosperity (1994), Ch. 1 : The Attack on Keynes

“Nobody can credibly promise to bring the old jobs back; what you can promise — and Mrs. Clinton did — are things like guaranteed health care and higher minimum wages. But working-class whites overwhelmingly voted for politicians who promise to destroy those gains.”

Paul Krugman

The New York Times Columns, The Populism Perplex (November 25, 2016)

Health

“If Keynes was Luther, Friedman was Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. And like the Jesuits, Friedman’s followers have acted as a sort of disciplined army of the faithful, spearheading a broad, but incomplete, rollback of Keynesian heresy. By the century’s end, classical economics had regained much though by no means all of its former dominion, and Friedman deserves much of the credit.”

Paul Krugman

"Who Was Milton Friedman?", The New York Review of Books (February 15, 2007)
The New York Review of Books articles

Faith

“The Sanders campaign has brought out a lot of idealism and energy that the progressive movement needs. It has also, however, brought out a streak of petulant self-righteousness among some supporters. Has it brought out that streak in the candidate, too?”

Paul Krugman

Sanders Over The Edge http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/opinion/sanders-over-the-edge.html (April 8, 2016)
The New York Times Columns

Support

“Consider John Kenneth Galbraith or Lester Thurow, both leading economists in the view of the general public, both with all the formal qualifications, both totally ignored by the academic mainstream. Or consider Robert Mundell, who is still revered for his contributions to international monetary theory, yet whose later incarnation as the father of supply-side economics has similarly been ignored.”

Paul Krugman

Development, Geography, and Economic Theory (1995), Ch. 1. The Fall and Rise of Development Economics

“What saved the economy, and the New Deal was the enormous public-works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy's needs.”

Paul Krugman

Op-ed, "Franklin Delano Obama," New York Times, November 10, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10krugman.html
The New York Times Columns

War , World

“Why doesn't policy-relevant work seem to conflict with my "real" research? I think that it's because I have been able to approach policy issues using almost exactly the same method that I use in my more basic work.”

Paul Krugman

How I Work (1993)

Thinking

“So the story of the baby-sitting co-op is not a mere amusement. If people would only take it seriously—if they could only understand that when great economic issues are at stake, whimsical parables are not a waste of time but the key to enlightenment—it is a story that could save the world.”

Paul Krugman

"Baby-Sitting the Economy", Slate (Aug. 13, 1998)

People , World , Understanding , Time

“I know that when I look at today’s Mexicans and Central Americans, they seem to me fundamentally the same as my grandparents seeking a better life in America. On the other side, however, open immigration can’t coexist with a strong social safety net; if you’re going to assure health care and a decent income to everyone, you can’t make that offer global. So Democrats have mixed feelings about immigration; in fact, it’s an agonizing issue.”

Paul Krugman

"The Curious Politics of Immigration" http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/the-curious-politics-of-immigration/, 26 April 2010, The Conscience of a Liberal blog at The New York Times

Life , Health , Feeling , Strong