Don’t Miss: Paul Krugman on stimulating the economy
We’re kicking ourselves for missing this on the radio yesterday, but here’s the magic of the Internets: you’ll never miss anything again. (That’s kind of scary.)
Paul Krugman dropped in on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer yesterday to take about the economic crisis, and his recommendation for an Obama economic stimulus plan (Krugman asks if there are enough productive projects ready to go quickly to absorb the money that we need to spend right now). The conversation about what’s “shovel-ready” and what’s not is pretty interesting, and gets to the core element of the difficulty of engineering a stimulus that creates stuff that lasts, and does it quickly enough to make a difference. Krugman estimates that it takes about $200 billion in stimulus to reduce the unemployment rate by 1 percent. Wow, is all we’ll say.
On the question of the national debt, Krugman says he worries about the long-term solvency of the federal government. Spending a trillion dollars to prop up the economy is a good thing for now, he says, but eventually it comes due.
(If your browser doesn’t display WNYC’s flash player, click here to listen.)
