Krugman: Bailout 'pulled us back from the brink'

Source: Investment News

Since the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act was passed on Oct. 3, the economic picture remains “spectacularly murky,” but financial services indicators are looking “better than they did one month ago,” according to Paul Krugman, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science.

“We've had a 107 degree fever and it’s down to 103,” he said Friday at a press conference in New York. “ pulled us back from the brink." Now, Mr. Krugman said, the focus is shifting toward supporting the real economy and creating a fiscal stimulus plan.

The Department of the Treasury’s decision not to use part of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to repurchase bad mortgage assets is an improvement on the original plan, he said, noting that it is “extremely hard” to find a mechanism that would work.

“They started off on the wrong foot and changed,” said Mr. Krugman, who is also a columnist for The New York Times and a professor of economics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton (N.J.) University. “They should have had a well-thought-out plan. is better.”



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but in the long run, it screwed us. All we've done is pushed the reconciliation back, and made it worse when it does get here.

When it comes down to Wall Street versus Main Street, Wall Street wins every time.

that is one tax they never seem to hesitate to raise & it is THE tax that affects
basic in-the-store-buying directly. Cut sales taxes to zero. Bloomberg just reported that store sales have fallen 4 months in a row. This would truly make a difference. Also disallow idiot city officials to fritter their money away on resurfacing their roads every other year, that whole system of 'you have to spend to a certain level or you'll get a smaller amount next year' is broken.

Cost of Parking meters.

Retail sales in slump - add obstacles, seems to be the motto.

sock it to the least-wealthy, probably because they do not have lobbyists, & the righties always fixate on cutting capital gains taxes & other crap-yet Blooberg is fretting that LUXURY GOODS sales are also DOWN. I guess they were wrong to feel that protecting the richest would work out nicely for them. Our middle-class jobs are now found in India & China, where-coincedentally they say-consumption was rising: vacations, new houses, new cars, even plastic surgery. Fancy that-manufacturing jobs=healthy economy; & a moon shot! That must be a bonus! Here they pay bonuses to CEOs who destroy the company they helmed, I guess it got too sophisticated for them & now they won't discern between a failure & an achiever.

There were better options that should have been debated.