Paul-krugman
Paul Krugman: Egos and immorality
In the wake of a devastating financial crisis, President Obama has enacted some modest and obviously needed regulation, he has proposed closing a few outrageous tax loopholes and he has suggested that Mitt Romney's history of buying and selling companies, often firing workers and gutting their pe…
May 29, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Dimon debacle
Sometimes it's hard to explain why we need strong financial regulation — especially in an era saturated with pro-business, pro-market propaganda. So we should always be grateful when someone makes the case for regulation more compelling and easier to understand. And this week, that means offering…
May 22, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Why we regulate
One of the characters in the classic 1939 film "Stagecoach" is a banker named Gatewood who lectures his captive audience on the evils of big government, especially bank regulation — "As if we bankers don't know how to run our own banks!" he exclaims. As the film progresses, we learn that Gatewood…
May 15, 2012 | 12:00 am
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French find austerity revolting
The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it's about time.
May 08, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Wasting our minds
In Spain, the unemployment rate among workers under 25 is more than 50 percent. In Ireland almost a third of the young are unemployed. Here in America, youth unemployment is "only" 16.5 percent, which is still terrible — but things could be worse.
May 01, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: The amnesia candidate
Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are? If you've been following his campaign from the beginning, that's a question you have probably asked many times.
Apr 24, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Europe's economic suicide
On Saturday The New York Times reported on an apparently growing phenomenon in Europe: 'suicide by economic crisis," people taking their own lives in despair over unemployment and business failure. It was a heartbreaking story. But I'm sure I wasn't the only reader, especially among economists, w…
Apr 17, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: The gullible center
So, can we talk about the Paul Ryan phenomenon?
Apr 10, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Pink slime economics
The big bad event of last week was, of course, the Supreme Court hearing on health reform. In the course of that hearing it became clear that several of the justices, and possibly a majority, are political creatures pure and simple, willing to embrace any argument, no matter how absurd, that serv…
Apr 03, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Lobbyists, guns and money
Florida's now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy — and it is. And it's tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos. But similar laws have been pushed across the nation, no…
Mar 27, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Hurray for health care reform
It's said that you can judge a man by the quality of his enemies. If the same principle applies to legislation, the Affordable Care Act — which was signed into law two years ago, but for the most part has yet to take effect — sits in a place of high honor.
Mar 20, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: What Greece means
So Greece has officially defaulted on its debt to private lenders. It was an "orderly" default, negotiated rather than simply announced, which I guess is a good thing. Still, the story is far from over. Even with this debt relief, Greece — like other European nations forced to impose austerity in…
Mar 13, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: States of depression
The economic news is looking better lately. But after previous false starts — remember "green shoots"? — it would be foolish to assume that all is well. And in any case, it's still a very slow economic recovery by historical standards.
Mar 06, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: What ails Europe?
LISBON • Things are terrible here, as unemployment soars past 13 percent. Things are even worse in Greece, Ireland, and arguably in Spain, and Europe as a whole appears to be sliding back into recession.
Feb 28, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Pain without gain
Last week the European Commission confirmed what everyone suspected: the economies it surveys are shrinking, not growing. It's not an official recession yet, but the only real question is how deep the downturn will be.
Feb 21, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Severe conservative syndrome
Mitt Romney has a gift for words — self-destructive words. On Friday he did it again, telling the Conservative Political Action Conference that he was a 'severely conservative governor."
Feb 14, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: U.S. economy is not OK
In a better world — specifically, a world with a better policy elite — a good jobs report would be cause for unalloyed celebration. In the world we actually inhabit, however, every silver lining comes with a cloud. Friday's report was, in fact, much better than expected, and has made many people,…
Feb 07, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: The austerity debacle
Last week the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a British think tank, released a startling chart comparing the current slump with past recessions and recoveries. It turns out that by one important measure — changes in real GDP since the recession began — Britain is doing worse t…
Jan 31, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Is our economy healing?
How goes the state of the union? Well, the state of the economy remains terrible. Three years after President Obama's inauguration and two and a half years since the official end of the recession, unemployment remains painfully high.
Jan 24, 2012 | 12:00 am
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How do we fare on the MLK holiday anniversary?
"I have a dream," declared Martin Luther King, in a speech that has lost none of its power to inspire. And some of that dream has come true. When King spoke in the summer of 1963, America was a nation that denied basic rights to millions of its citizens, simply because their skin was the wrong co…
Jan 17, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: An unlevel field
Last month, President Barack Obama gave a speech invoking the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt on behalf of progressive ideals — and Republicans were not happy. Mitt Romney, in particular, insisted that where Roosevelt believed that "government should level the playing field to create equal opportunitie…
Jan 10, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Premature austerity
"The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury." So declared John Maynard Keynes in 1937, even as FDR was about to prove him right by trying to balance the budget too soon, sending the U.S. economy — which had been steadily recovering up to that point — into a severe re…
Jan 03, 2012 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Welcome to post-truth politics
Suppose that President Barack Obama were to say the following: "Mitt Romney believes that corporations are people, and he believes that only corporations and the wealthy should have any rights. He wants to reduce middle-class Americans to serfs, forced to accept whatever wages corporations choose…
Dec 27, 2011 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: Red danger
Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble. There was rapid growth in credit — with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking but rather through …
Dec 20, 2011 | 12:00 am
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Paul Krugman: It feels more like a Depression
It's time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression. True, it's not a full replay of the Great Depression, but that's cold comfort. Unemployment in both America and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values…
Dec 13, 2011 | 12:00 am
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