Paul Krugman Quotes & Sayings

There is no economic policy. That's really important to say. The general modus operandi of the Bushies is that they don't make policies to deal with problems. They use problems to justify things they wanted to do anyway. So there is no policy to deal with the lack of jobs. There really isn't even a policy to deal with terrorism. It's all about how can we spin what's happening out there to do what we want to do. — Paul Krugman

[W]hat possible purpose does this lashing-out serve? Will activists be shamed into recovering their previous enthusiasm? Will Republicans stop their vicious attacks because Obama is lashing out to his left? It was pure self-indulgence; even if he feels aggrieved, he has to judge his words by their usefulness, not by his desire to vent. This isn't about him. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

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

The rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. — Paul Krugman

When stock prices are rising, it's called "momentum investing"; when they are falling, it's called "panic". — Paul Krugman

I'm not sure that the current value of the NASDAQ is justified, but I'm not sure that it isn't. — Paul Krugman

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

We're living in a Dark Age of macroeconomics. Remember, what defined the Dark Ages wasn't the fact that they were primitive - the Bronze Age was primitive, too. What made the Dark Ages dark was the fact that so much knowledge had been lost, that so much known to the Greeks and Romans had been forgotten by the barbarian kingdoms that followed. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

Wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing - correctly - that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations, but failed to realize that eventually the craziness would take on a life of its own, and that the monster they created would turn on its creators as well as the little people. — Paul Krugman

The next time you hear businesspeople propounding their views about the economy, ask yourself. Have they taken the time to study this subject? Have they read what the experts write?If not, never mind how successful they have been in business. Ignore them, because they probably have no idea what they are talking about. — Paul Krugman

So, very early reports are that Obamacare exchanges are, as expected, having some technical glitches on the first day - maybe even a bit worse than expected, because it appears that volume has been much bigger than predicted. Here's what you need to know: this is good, not bad, news for the program. Lots of people logging on and signing up on the very first day is an early indication that it's going to be fine, that plenty of people will sign up for the first year of health reform. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

[W]e have a lot of evidence on what happens when you raise the minimum wage. And the evidence is overwhelmingly positive: Hiking the minimum wage has little or no adverse effect on employment while significantly increasing workers' earnings. — Paul Krugman

Congress has always had a soft spot for "experts" who tell members what they want to hear, whether it's supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth. — Paul Krugman

But where will the Fed find another bubble? — Paul Krugman

[D]ebt increases that didn't arise either from war or from extraordinary financial crisis are entirely associated with hard-line conservative governments. — Paul Krugman

In fact, I'd say that the sources of the economy's expansion from 2003 to 2007 were, in order, the housing bubble, the war, and - very much in third place - tax cuts. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

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 — Paul Krugman

There's another element in the euro crisis, another weakness of a shared currency, that took many people, myself included, by surprise. It turns out that countries that lack their own currency are highly vulnerable to self-fulfilling panic, in which the efforts of investors to avoid losses from default end up triggering the very default they fear. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

The real danger with debt is what happens if lots of people decide, or are forced, to pay it off at the same time. — Paul Krugman

Incentives aren't the only thing that matter for economic growth. Opportunity is also crucial, and extreme inequality deprives many people of the opportunity to fulfill their potential, and government programs that reduce inequality can make the nation as a whole richer by reducing that waste. — Paul Krugman

In the scientific world, the syndrome known as 'great man's disease' happens when a famous researcher in one field develops strong opinions about another field that he or she does not understand, such as a chemist who decides that he is an expert in medicine or a physicist who decides that he is an expert in cognitive science.
They have trouble accepting that they must go back to school before they can make pronouncements in a new field. — Paul Krugman

Not all private equity people are evil. Only some. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

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

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. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

Businesspeople are not used to thinking about closed systems;economists are. — Paul Krugman

Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that's slightly below the average across all advanced economies. — Paul Krugman

I've been thinking a lot lately about the power of doctrines - how support for a false dogma can become politically mandatory, and how overwhelming contrary evidence only makes such dogmas stronger and more extreme. — Paul Krugman

A snarky but accurate description of monetary policy over the past five years is that the Federal Reserve successfully replaced the technology bubble with a housing bubble — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

If you can create even the illusion of high profitability for a few years, then when the thing collapses you can walk out of the wreckage a very rich man. — Paul Krugman

Our grandfathers lived in a world of largely self-sufficient, inward-looking national economies - but our great-great grandfathers lived, as we do, in a world of large-scale international trade and investment, a world destroyed by nationalism. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months ... There was a Twilight Zone episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time, we don't need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus. — Paul Krugman

What saved the economy, and the New Deal was the enormous public-works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy's needs. — Paul Krugman

Coming up with a good idea, with an insight into the way the world works that is really new and that you really believe in, is a deeply satisfying experience. — Paul Krugman

The habit of disguising ideology as expertise has created a deficit of legitimacy. — Paul Krugman

What the Depression teaches us is that when the economy is so depressed that even a zero interest rate isn't low enough, you have to put conventional notions of prudence and sound policy aside. — Paul Krugman

I think Stockman is an interesting sort of amalgam. — Paul Krugman

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

The United States in particular and the West in general should be feeling a little embarrassed about all that lecturing we did to the Third World. — Paul Krugman

Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We've gone from bad economic doctrine. We've even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we're talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering upon the already miserable. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

What Republicans have actually put on the table is almost nothing. All of the rest is just big talk. So how is the president supposed to negotiate with people who say, 'Here's my demands. By the way, I can't give you any specifics. Just make me happy'? — Paul Krugman

However, the fact that an economist offers a theoretical analysis does not and should not automatically command respect. What is needed is some assurance that the analysis is actually relevant. — Paul Krugman

It has been obvious all along, to anyone paying attention, that the politicians shouting loudest about deficits are actually using deficit hysteria as a cover story for their real agenda, which is top-down class warfare. To put it in Romneyesque terms, it's all about finding an excuse to slash programs that help people who like to watch Nascar events, even while lavishing tax cuts on people who like to own Nascar teams. — Paul Krugman

The federal government is basically an insurance company with an army. — Paul Krugman

Europe is often held up as a cautionary tale, a demonstration that if you try to make the economy less brutal, to take better care of your fellow citizens when they're down on their luck, you end up killing economic progress. But what European experience actually demonstrates is the opposite: social justice and progress can go hand in hand. — Paul Krugman

And that's just the beginning. More and more, conventional wisdom says that the responsible thing is to make the unemployed suffer. And while the benefits from inflicting pain are an illusion, the pain itself will be all too real. — Paul Krugman

Economists don't usually make good speculators, because they think too much. — Paul Krugman

[Conventional wisdom] very heavily tends to reflect the preferences and the interests of the elite. — Paul Krugman

There's one thing that the Fed has been really good at cracking down on, and that's inflation. — Paul Krugman

Simple doesn't mean stupid. Thinking that it does, does. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we're going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it's long past time for the GOP's leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers. — Paul Krugman

To the extent that sacrifices need to be made, shouldn't the people who've made out like bandits this past generation be first in line? The problem with getting out of the slump is that we need to spend more. It's not that somebody needs to spend less. We have idle workers who have the skills and the willingness to work. We have idle factories. Dealing with this is not about saying somebody needs to suffer. It's saying that we need to be prepared to open the taps. — Paul Krugman

The world economy is in a nosedive, and understanding what I call "depression economics" - the weird world you get into when even a zero interest rate isn't low enough, and a messed-up financial system is dragging down the real economy - is essential if we're going to avoid the worst. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action. — Paul Krugman

Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups — Paul Krugman

I know that when I look at today's Mexicans and Central Americans, they seem to me fundamentally the same as my grandparents seeking a better life in America. On the other side, however, open immigration can't coexist with a strong social safety net; if you're going to assure health care and a decent income to everyone, you can't make that offer global. So Democrats have mixed feelings about immigration; in fact, it's an agonizing issue. — Paul Krugman

Evidence and expertise have a well-known liberal bias. — Paul Krugman

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

One is reminded of the old joke about the centipede who was asked how he managed to coordinate his 100 legs : He started thinking about it and could never walk properly again. — Paul Krugman

If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist, you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist. — Paul Krugman

Instead it seems that business - like weight loss - is a subject wherein hope and fear inspire limitless gullibility. — Paul Krugman

In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise. — Paul Krugman

I don't think I've had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried. — Paul Krugman

If Europe's example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don't drive them too much. — Paul Krugman

Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn't sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets. — Paul Krugman

I'm especially baffled by the idea of taking insurance against a U.S. default. If America defaults, we're talking about a chaotic world - Mad Max, more or less - in which case, who imagines that insurance claims will be honored? — Paul Krugman

Are you, or is someone you know, a gadget freak? If so, you doubtless know that Wednesday was iPhone 5 day, the day Apple unveiled its latest way for people to avoid actually speaking to or even looking at whoever they're with. — Paul Krugman

[The US] budget is dominated by the retirement programs, Social Security and Medicare - loosely speaking, the post-cold-war federal government is a big pension fund that also happens to have an army. — Paul Krugman

Academic credentials are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having your ideas taken seriously. If a famous professor repeatedly says stupid things, then tries to claim he never said them, there's no rule against calling him a mendacious idiot - and no special qualifications required to make that pronouncement other than doing your own homework.Conversely, if someone without formal credentials consistently makes trenchant, insightful observations, he or she has earned the right to be taken seriously, regardless of background. — Paul Krugman

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

I believe that the only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men. — Paul Krugman

Whenever you see some business person quoted complaining about how he or she can't find workers with the necessary skills, ask what wage they're offering.
Almost always it turns out what said business person really wants is highly (and expensively) educated workers at a manual-labor wage. No wonder they come up short. — Paul Krugman

I don't want a job in the administration; I think I'm more effective carping from the sidelines. — Paul Krugman

The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead. — Paul Krugman

[I]n America, at least, we have a pretty good record for behaving in a fiscally responsible fashion, with one exception - namely, the fiscal irresponsibility that prevails when, and only when, hard-line conservatives are in power. — Paul Krugman

It was only with the crisis that debt soared.
Yet many Europeans in key positions - especially politicians and officials in Germany, but also the leadership of the European Central Bank and opinion leaders throughout the world of finance and banking - are deeply committed to the Big Delusion, and no amount of contrary evidence will shake them. As a result, the problem of dealing with the crisis is often couched in moral terms: nations are in trouble because they have sinned, and they must redeem themselves through suffering.
And that's a very bad way to approach the actual problems Europe faces. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

I have friends, political scientists, sociologists, who all share an interest at least in certain kinds of science fiction. — Paul Krugman

Democracy or breakdown in Syria would change the whole Middle East overnight. — Paul Krugman

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. — Paul Krugman

What happened after 9/11 - and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not - was deeply shameful. [The] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neo-cons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons ... The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it. — Paul Krugman

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

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

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

If you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God. — Paul Krugman

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

In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price-determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away. — Paul Krugman

I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society. — Paul Krugman