Paul Krugman Quotes

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.

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.

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.

Not all private equity people are evil. Only some.

The problem with digital books is that you can always find what you are looking for but you need to go to a bookstore to find what you weren't looking for.

The French, unfortunately, actually believe what they say, and that has been very destructive.

Tax cuts were not going to be effective at creating jobs, and the job creation record is lousy.

Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you’ve been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we’re hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything to avert it.

The science fiction world has a lot of people doing seriously imaginative thinking.

The fact is that the two years or so after 9/11 were a terrible time in America – a time of political exploitation and intimidation, culminating in the deliberate misleading of the nation into the invasion of Iraq. It’s probably worth pointing out that I’m not saying anything now that I wasn’t saying in real time back then, when Bush had a sky-high approval rating and any criticism was denounced as treason. And there’s nothing I’ve done in my life of which I’m more proud.

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.

I admit it: I had fun watching right-wingers go wild as health reform finally became law.

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.

Unsustainable situations usually go on longer than most economists think possible. But they always end, and when they do, it's often painful.

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.

Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be "armed and dangerous" without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

The federal government is basically an insurance company with an army.

You really have to go searching desperately to find any contemporary examples of good, old-fashioned runaway inflation.

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.

[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.

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.

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy.

Debt is one person's liability, but another person's asset.

We know that advanced economies with stable governments that borrow in their own currency are capable of running up very high levels of debt without crisis.

...instead it seems that business - like weight loss - is a subject wherein hope and fear inspire limitless gullibility.

If you're doing your job right, some substantial group of people [is] going to be mad at you.

Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes. It's going to be that we're actually going to take Medicare under control, and we're going to have to get some additional revenue, probably from a VAT. But it's not going to happen now.

The key reason executives are paid so much now is that they appoint the members of the corporate board that determines their compensation and control many of the perks that board members count on. So it's not the invisible hand of the market that leads to those monumental executive incomes; it's the invisible handshake in the boardroom.

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.

Governments do not necessarily act in the national interest, especially when making detailed microeconomic interventions. Instead, they are influenced by interest group pressures. The kinds of interventions that new trade theory suggests can raise national income will typically raise the welfare of small, fortunate groups by large amounts, while imposing costs on larger, more diffuse groups.

As I've often said, you can shop online and find whatever you're looking for, but bookstores are where you find what you weren't looking for.

Can we break the machine that is imposing right-wing radicalism on the United States? The scariest part is that the media is part of that machine.

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.

[T]he next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you'll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we're bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we're good. And real-world policy - policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families - is being built on that foundation.

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.

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.

I've always believed in expansionary monetary policy and if necessary fiscal policy when the economy is depressed.

Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises.

[I]f you look at United States history since World War II, you find that of the 10 presidents who preceded Barack Obama, seven left office with a debt ratio lower than when they came in. Who were the three exceptions? Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes.

Most work in macroeconomics in the past 30 years has been useless at best and harmful at worst.

America's political landscape is infested with many zombie ideas - beliefs about policy that have been repeatedly refuted with evidence and analysis but refuse to die. The most prominent zombie is the insistence that low taxes on rich people are the key to prosperity.

The economic expansion that began in 2001, while it has been great for corporate profits, has yet to produce any significant gains for ordinary working Americans. And now it looks as if it never will.

Under the gold standard America had no major financial panics other than in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933.

The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.

In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.

It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

The great thing about fiscal policy is that it has a direct impact and doesn't require you to bind the hands of future policymakers.