Paul Krugman: We Could End This Depression Right Now

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/155538/paul_krugman%3A_we_could_end_this_depression_right_now/

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This week, Paul Krugman appeared on the AlterNet Radio Hour to discuss his book. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation (you can listen to the entire show here):

Joshua Holland: Let me ask you first about a somewhat provocative word in your title, the D-word. What makes this a depression rather than a so-called “Great Recession” that we’ve heard so much about?

Paul Krugman: A recession is when things are going down, when the economy is heading down. A depression is when the economy is down, and stays down for a long time. We have the Great Depression, which was more than a decade. There were two recessions in there and there were two periods that were recoveries in the sense that things were getting better, but not much better. The whole period was a period that was really terrible for America and for the world. We’re in a period like that right now. Not as bad as the Great Depression, but that’s not much to recommend it. It’s a sustained thing. We’re now in year five of very high unemployment with terrible prospects for young people. It’s a depression.

JH: I wonder if it’s similar to the so-called Long Depression in the late 19th century. It was kind of two recessions sandwiched around a period of growth. The reason I ask that is because median wages really did not recover after the so-called tech bubble burst in 2000 before we hit this crash. Isn’t that right?

PK: There is an argument that even the so-called “Bush boom” – that period of the middle years of the last decade – was still not very good for most Americans. There is that, but clearly things got an order of magnitude worse after 2007. That’s mostly what I’m focusing on in End This Depression Now.

JH: I want to encourage people to read the book, but can you just give readers a sense of what you think is the most important thing policy makers should be thinking about doing right now?

PK: The moral of the book is: this doesn’t have to be happening. This is essentially a technical process; it’s a small thing. It’s like having a dead battery in a car, and while there may be a lot wrong with the car, you can get the car going remarkably easily, if you’re willing to accept that’s what the problem really is.

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1. K&R

[AnotherMcIntosh]

2. "We’re now in year five of very high unemployment with terrible prospects for young people" !!!

"It’s a depression."

When is somebody in Washington going to care?

[Madmiddle]

3. The biggest problem

is a political party that have members in the million dollar club. They refuse to spend any time on the problem, instead they're compounding the problem by refusing to cooperate. Now, we have citizen uniteds ability to spend as much as they want, with anonymous donors frommall over the world spending money against the working-class. The November elections will cause a revolution.