Tonight Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and New York Times op-ed columnist, gave a talk in Cambridge, in part to promote the paperback edition of his book, The Conscience of a Liberal, and in part because he’s a liberal God and coming to Cambridge is soothing affirmation of his Holiness. Since the economy is such an interesting and timely topic, and since Krugman’s column in the Times is my only touchstone to the world of economics, and since I happened to be in the Harvard book store the day that tickets went on sale, I decided to go and see Krugman.
I’m suspicious of economists. To my outsider eye, it seems that they either want to privatize everything and allow the invisible hand to ensure compliance, or they are still tweaking Marxist theories and advocating planned economies. Krugman, with his lefty ideals about welfare (loves it) and trickle-down economics (hates it), is an anomaly: An economist who actually agrees with my left-of-center political views, thereby validating that they are financially feasible!
What was obvious from his talk is that Krugman is a very, very clever guy. Quick, articulate, and witty. The quips flew fast and furious:
“When your neighbor loses his job, it’s a recession. When you lose your job, it’s a depression,” he quoted before predicting that unemployment could take 5 years to recover.
“To get us out of this economic mess, we need guys who know where the bodies are buried, but not the guys who buried them there,” he said before offering a doom-laced assessment of Obama’s economic team.
Regarding the stimulus bill, he said it’s only 50% of what it needs to be: “It’s like building a bridge halfway across a river.”
And Krugman is optimistic that China and the rest of the world are only hoping and praying for America’s recovery, because of an old saying: “If you owe the bank $5,000, you’re in trouble. If you owe the bank 1 million dollars, the bank’s in trouble.”
The audience was rolling, which helped cushion Krugman’s dire pronouncement of short-term economic hardship and slim hopes of health care reform.
