Paul Krugman
By rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.Collection: Done
Yes, over the centuries economic progress has reduced some gross disparities - modern Americans are relatively unlikely to simply starve to death (though it can happen), so in that sense the gap between rich and poor has narrowed. But the question isn't whether society is, in some sense, more equal than it was in 1900. It's whether it is radically more unequal than it was in 1970. And of course it is.Collection: Justice
Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics.Collection: Important
Our popular economics writers, however, are not in the business of giving their readers a ringside seat on the research action; with no exception I can think of, they use their books to do an end run around the normal structure of scholarship, to preach ideas that few serious economists share. Often, these ideas are not just at odds with the professional consensus; they are demonstrably wrong, and sometimes terminally silly. But they sound good to the unwary reader.Collection: Running
I think Stockman is an interesting sort of amalgam.Collection: Thinking
It's a funny thing, by the way, how people who love free markets are also quite sure that they know that investors are being irrational.Collection: Funny Things
Anyone who thinks that the last 80 years, ever since FDR took us off gold, have been a doomed venture, that strikes me as kind of cranky.Collection: Thinking
When the Fed decides that inflation is too high, they have the tools, and they've shown historically that they have the will, to bring it down. And, it might be painful.Collection: Tools
I think if you're a liberal, you believe that we all are, at least to some extent, our brothers' keepers, you really believe that we have a sumptuary responsibility to make sure that life is decent for everybody in America, that you believe that society out to be broadly shared, and you believe that you can't have a real democracy unless you have a little bit, at least, of economic democracy.Collection: Brother
Asset bubbles have happened even without not-so-easy money. And, in a depressed economy, where alternative uses of money are not great, people are going to bid up the prices of profitable corporations and stuff like that.Collection: People
I'm especially baffled by the idea of taking insurance against a U.S. default. If America defaults, we're talking about a chaotic world - Mad Max, more or less - in which case, who imagines that insurance claims will be honored?Collection: Talking
I really think that people have to think safety; taking risks for higher yield is a bad idea once you're in late or latish middle age.Collection: Thinking
Tax cuts were not going to be effective at creating jobs, and the job creation record is lousy.Collection: Jobs
The world economy is in a nosedive, and understanding what I call "depression economics" - the weird world you get into when even a zero interest rate isn't low enough, and a messed-up financial system is dragging down the real economy - is essential if we're going to avoid the worst.Collection: Zero
Our grandfathers lived in a world of largely self-sufficient, inward-looking national economies - but our great-great grandfathers lived, as we do, in a world of large-scale international trade and investment, a world destroyed by nationalism.Collection: Self
For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush won re-election by posing as America's defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security.Collection: Cutting
Many people ... prefer to describe themselves as progressives rather than liberals. To some extent that's a response to the decades-long propaganda campaign conducted by movement conservatives, which has been quite successful in making Americans disdain the word liberal but much less successful in reducing support for liberal policies.Collection: Successful
Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn’t sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets.Collection: Memories
These days, however, the main problem comes from the right - from conservatives who, unlike most economists, really do think that the free market is always right - to such an extent that they refuse to believe even the most overwhelming scientific evidence if it seems to suggest a justification for government action.Collection: Believe
Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We've gone from bad economic doctrine. We've even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we're talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering upon the already miserable.Collection: Party
Now, it’s true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism.Collection: Silly
So, very early reports are that Obamacare exchanges are, as expected, having some technical glitches on the first day - maybe even a bit worse than expected, because it appears that volume has been much bigger than predicted. Here’s what you need to know: this is good, not bad, news for the program... Lots of people logging on and signing up on the very first day... is an early indication that it’s going to be fine, that plenty of people will sign up for the first year of health reform.Collection: Years
Unsustainable situations usually go on longer than most economists think possible. But they always end, and when they do, it's often painful.Collection: Thinking
The Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.Collection: Cult Of Personality
Consumer spending is now plunging at serious-recession rate ... even if the rescue now in train succeeds in unfreezing credit markets, the real economy has immense downward momentum. In addition to financial rescues, we need major stimulus programs.Collection: Real
To the extent that sacrifices need to be made, shouldn't the people who've made out like bandits this past generation be first in line? The problem with getting out of the slump is that we need to spend more. It's not that somebody needs to spend less. We have idle workers who have the skills and the willingness to work. We have idle factories. Dealing with this is not about saying somebody needs to suffer. It's saying that we need to be prepared to open the taps.Collection: Sacrifice
The French, unfortunately, actually believe what they say, and that has been very destructive.Collection: Believe
I've always believed that a speculative bubble need not lead to a recession, as long as interest rates are cut quickly enough to stimulate alternative investments. But I had to face the fact that speculative bubbles usually are followed by recessions. My excuse has been that this was because the policy makers moved too slowly - that central banks were typically too slow to cut interest rates in the face of a burst bubble, giving the downturn time to build up a lot of momentum.Collection: Philosophy
And when the chickens that didn't hatch come home to roost, we will rue the day when, misled by sloppy accounting and rosy scenarios, we gave away the national nest egg.Collection: Home
People who are complaining about the Fed are people who've been predicting runaway inflation for five and six years, and it hasn't happened.Collection: Years
What the Depression teaches us is that when the economy is so depressed that even a zero interest rate isn't low enough, you have to put conventional notions of prudence and sound policy aside.Collection: Zero
There is no economic policy. That's really important to say. The general modus operandi of the Bushies is that they don't make policies to deal with problems. They use problems to justify things they wanted to do anyway. So there is no policy to deal with the lack of jobs. There really isn't even a policy to deal with terrorism. It's all about how can we spin what's happening out there to do what we want to do.Collection: Jobs
One way in which Americans have always been exceptional has been in our support for education. First we took the lead in universal primary education; then the “high school movement” made us the first nation to embrace widespread secondary education.Collection: Education
On the political as on the economic front it's important not to fall into the "not as bad as" trap. High unemployment isn't O.K. just because it hasn't hit 1933 levels; ominous political trends shouldn’t be dismissed just because there’s no Hitler in sight.Collection: Fall
The planet will continue to cook.Collection: Global Warming
[I]f one asks what substantive contributions [F. A. Hayek] made to our understanding of how the world works, one is left at something of a loss. Were it not for his politics, he would be virtually forgotten.Collection: Loss
There's nothing magic about spending on tanks and bombs rather than roads and bridges.Collection: Bridges
If the price of everything is going down, that's going to include wages as well. People will have an incentive to sit on their cash and not spend it.Collection: People
I don't want a job in the administration; I think I'm more effective carping from the sidelines.Collection: Jobs
Democracy or breakdown in Syria would change the whole Middle East overnight.Collection: Spring
We're living in a Dark Age of macroeconomics. Remember, what defined the Dark Ages wasn’t the fact that they were primitive — the Bronze Age was primitive, too. What made the Dark Ages dark was the fact that so much knowledge had been lost, that so much known to the Greeks and Romans had been forgotten by the barbarian kingdoms that followed.Collection: Dark
We have a lot of evidence on what happens when you raise the minimum wage. And the evidence is overwhelmingly positive: Hiking the minimum wage has little or no adverse effect on employment while significantly increasing workers' earnings.Collection: Hiking
The important thing to understand is that the case for pollution control isn't based on some kind of aesthetic distaste for industrial society. Pollution does real, measurable damage, especially to human health.Collection: Real
In fact, I'd say that the sources of the economy's expansion from 2003 to 2007 were, in order, the housing bubble, the war, and - very much in third place - tax cuts.Collection: Philosophy
Wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing - correctly - that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations, but failed to realize that eventually the craziness would take on a life of its own, and that the monster they created would turn on its creators as well as the little people.Collection: Party
The United States in particular and the West in general should be feeling a little embarrassed about all that lecturing we did to the Third World.Collection: Feelings
Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is by and large elderly white people arguing with empty chairs.Collection: White
[The US] budget is dominated by the retirement programs, Social Security and Medicare - loosely speaking, the post-cold-war federal government is a big pension fund that also happens to have an army.Collection: Retirement