Paul Krugman: We Could End This Depression Right Now

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on May 22, 2012, Printed on May 23, 2012

The central message of Paul Krugman's new book, End This Depression Now! is simple: It doesn't have to be like this. No external dynamic is keeping unemployment at more than 8 percent and consigning a generation of young workers to an economy in which risk is plentiful and opportunities scarce. It is only a failure of political will -- and an almost universal embrace of conservative voodoo economics – that is keeping us mired in this dark economic moment.

Of the 2009 stimulus, Krugman writes, “Those who had more or less the right ideas about what the economy needed, including President Obama, were timid, never willing either to acknowledge just how much action was required or to admit later on that what they did in the first round was inadequate.” Instead of treating the dismal jobs picture as a crisis requiring their full attention, Washington “pivoted” to talking about the deficit – a phantom menace -- at precisely the wrong time. “People with the wrong ideas,” Krugman writes, “were vehement and untroubled by self-doubt.”