Trying to pull a fast one?
That was not Krugman. It was Krugman citing "Paul McCulley of Pimco".
And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.
To place that in context, here are the concluding paragraphs of Krugman's column, from
Dubya's Double Dip?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 02, 2002
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Bear in mind that business forecasters are under enormous pressure to be cheerleaders: ''I must confess to being amazed at the venom my double dip call still elicits,'' Mr. Roach wrote yesterday at cbsmarketwatch.com. We should never forget that Wall Street basically represents the sell side.
Bear in mind also that government officials have a stake in accentuating the positive. The administration needs a recovery because, with deficits exploding, the only way it can justify that tax cut is by pretending that it was just what the economy needed. Mr. Greenspan needs one to avoid awkward questions about his own role in creating the stock market bubble.
But wishful thinking aside, I just don't understand the grounds for optimism. Who, exactly, is about to start spending a lot more? At this point it's a lot easier to tell a story about how the recovery will stall than about how it will speed up. And while I like movies with happy endings as much as the next guy, a movie isn't realistic unless the story line makes sense.
nytimes.com |
