Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman, talking about the decision by European governments and the Senate Republicans to cut spending in the middle of a recession/depression:

So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

According to Krugman the US has seen two previous depressions: the Long Depression at the end of the 19th century and the Great Depression in the 1930s. Krugman says we are entering a third depression, this one likely to be long rather than great.