Paul Krugman Warns: 'We Are Crippling Our Future' [View all]

[marmar]

from HuffPost:



Paul Krugman is worried about our future.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist told a meeting of other prominent economists that we're not doing enough in the short term to ensure that country's long-term economic health is taken care of.

"We are crippling our future as well as our present by falling to do what is needed to deal with the short run," the Nobel Prize-winning economist said at the American Economic Association's 2013 annual meeting on Sunday, according to a new transcript by Brad DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "A failure to deal with the short run is inflicting very large long-run costs."

Though Krugman did not give examples, there are several signs that the prolonged economic downturn is inflicting long-term damage on the economy. For one, the unemployment rate averaged 4.6 percent in 2007, but Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in December that the economy's long-run unemployment rate is now somewhere between 5 and 6 percent. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/paul-krugman-aea-meeting-2013_n_2434563.html