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This transcript was created by voice popularity software. Although it has been reviewed through human transcribers, it would possibly involve errors. Please review the audio of the episode before quoting this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes. com if you have any questions.
This is “The Opinions,” a show that features a combination of voices from “The New York Times Opinion. “You’ve heard the news. Here’s what needs to be done about it.
[MUSIC PLAYBACK]
Let’s just get this over with. I want to get in the pool. [MUSIC PLAYING]
I’m Paul Krugman, just retired as a “New York Times” columnist. Wrote my final column, and these are some reflections on 25 years at “The New York Times.”
[MUSIC PLAYING] There are many things I have written that I am proud of. But I think what I’m most proud of is that I took unpopular and, in fact, contrarian positions. So I like to think that even though I’ve taken many positions and rarely been willing to take risks, I’ve done so based on evidence that I’ve tried to share with readers.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I recruited in the early 2000s and I think it’s very difficult, especially for young people, to master the mentality that we had, which was incredibly optimistic. I literally said we have a lot of other people writing about the Middle East, but it’s not as engaging. And let’s get someone to write about economics, because in economics there were all these fun, sexy things happening. Some things seemed silly, but that’s okay. And it turned out that the Middle East was a little more attractive than anyone imagined at the time.
But overall, Americans were very positive about the future. A clear majority of people think that the country is going in the right direction. We have seen many successes in economic development. Not everything is wonderful, but the overall feeling is very good.
These days, deep down, everyone is irritated. Workers feel betrayed by the elites. Billionaires feel betrayed because why don’t other people like them?This is how this great deterioration in the mood of the nation can be understood. So I chose five columns that capture themes that I thought they were and that, in hindsight, appear on the way to where we are.
So one of the columns, I think, that illustrates a pivot point in changing optimism and faith in our leaders was one I wrote about the Iraq war. I shouldn’t have been writing about Iraq. This was not my department. I was hired to write about economics. But I found myself feeling that I had to write about Iraq because no one else was — not in what I thought was a clear-eyed way.
There are many myths about the atmosphere of national unity after 9/11. This never happened. I was there. I pay attention. Attempts to exploit 9/11 for political purposes began literally while the Pentagon was still on fire. And furthermore, I paid close attention to what now seemed like trivial economic debates, but debates about tax cuts, in which I had detected a tendency toward dishonesty, misleading presentation and selective evidence about economic problems and the presentation of evidence in favor of war looked just like that.
Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof to use biological or chemical or a nuclear weapon, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
So I set out to write about Iraq and say, I think much more clearly than anyone on a primary op-ed page, that it’s a false argument for war. And I was deeply relieved when everyone became cynical about the war and I no longer had to play that role. But something really bad. Politicians have never been one hundred percent honest. But the point of dishonesty is something new.
Then, around the period 2002-2003, real estate prices in the United States began to skyrocket.
On Fridays, the business report focuses on your money. And today, we’ll continue a look at the money that you may have to spend on a house. Prices have climbed more than 100 percent in Montclair, New Jersey, and climbed 170 percent in San Diego.
Much of the explosion in space costs reflects new lending strategies. Subprime mortgages (and it’s a long story about what that meant), however, essentially the criteria for lending to home buyers were significantly more comfortable. And when space costs began to come down to Earth, it not only meant that many other people found they had mortgages they couldn’t pay, but it also meant that enormous pressures were placed on the banking system. That’s why I have a column about the real estate bubble because it’s just starting to lose steam.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I understood without delay that housing was the main engine of the American economy and that it was clearly not sustainable. We were going to have problems. I didn’t expect it to be as bad as it turned out, but it was clear. And it was an incredibly unpopular view. He would possibly have received more hate mail for talking about the housing bubble than for anything else he ever wrote. Many other people were financially and psychologically compromised with the idea that going through confusing financial procedures to invest in housing was a great idea.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I was pretty sure this would lead to a recession. What I didn’t realize (I blame myself) was that I didn’t realize the problems we would have in the banking sector. I thought there was a challenge, but it was a much bigger challenge than I had imagined.
It was a manic Monday in the financial markets. The Dow tumbled more than 500 points after two pillars of the street tumbled over the weekend.
The news from Wall Street has shaken up the situation of the American people in our economy.
Which brings us to 2008. Obama was elected. He inherited a massive financial crisis, and the banks were bailed out. It was essential that the banks be bailed out because we needed them to keep functioning. But they were bailed out in ways that arguably let people who were responsible for the crisis get off scot-free.
And other people felt betrayed by the banks. They felt that some people had been rescued and others had not. It was an inherently problematic time and deepened the feeling of distrust. The point of political hostility was enormous.
That’s why we want an American recovery and reinvestment plan, which only. . .
And Obama put out a fiscal stimulus package, which had higher numbers in absolute terms, but if it was actually successful, it seemed to me to be about a third of what was literally appropriate. So, on the one hand, there were other people screaming: Oh my God, 700 billion dollars. How can we do it? In fact, the answer is quite simple.
So the article I wrote said, “Hey, this deserves to be $2 trillion. Why don’t we do this? And that sets the stage for a weak recovery and years of peak unemployment, which will further disillusion other people. And one of the funniest things is that, politically, the other Obama staff were aware that maybe they were underestimated, but they believed, I think, incredibly naively, that they could simply go back to Congress to ask for more if the stimulus measures initials are successful. effective. be inappropriate.
And I warned, from the beginning, that when they come back for more, they will say no, the lesson of what has happened so far is that fiscal for the economy does not work, so more than that. And that’s some of what happened. We find ourselves in this kind of political and economic trap. It also meant that we had actually made mistakes as a country. And once again, the public had even less confidence in our leadership.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
As bad as the monetary crisis and as inadequate as the recovery, at least initially, one of Obama’s wonderful victories is the Affordable Care Act. And in 2009, I wrote a column explaining that this plan was very similar to a plan that had already been implemented in Massachusetts.
And you know what, it works in Massachusetts, and it’s going to work nationally. Basically, in this case, trust your leaders. They actually do know what they’re doing. And this is a well-designed plan. And this was at a time when there were widespread predictions of disaster that the whole thing would fall apart. And I said it wouldn’t. And thank heavens it didn’t.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And, look, there are a lot of people who played some role in getting it across the finish line. I like to think that I played some small part in that. They needed public voices, public intellectuals saying this plan makes sense, this is a good plan. I actually — I talked to people in the administration at the time.
And some of them were literally invested in that I was a purist, that I would say no, that we literally deserve to have single payer, that we deserve to have Medicare for all, which I think would be a fantastic system, but I knew it would be. It won’t happen. And the fact that I came out in the Times and said, This is a smart plan, this is the smartest plan we’ll probably ever have, and it’s worth it.
I mean, obviously President Obama got it through. Nancy Pelosi wrangled the votes to get it through. So they have a vastly greater credit. But I think that I was at least helping a little bit in pushing it along.
So, the last column in this series of five written in 2010, just as I learned that there was beginning to be a consensus among elites about wanting to cut spending, which I thought absolutely wrong, which is a terrible idea, which would be to worsen the economic crisis and delay the recovery. And that’s what happened.
So we had the financial crisis in 2008, and Lehman Brothers failed and all of that, which was terrifying. But then we had a second wave of crises in Europe when Greece suddenly hit the wall.
On Wednesday morning, the euro hit a fresh one-year low against the dollar. In addition to the smell of Greek economic decline, there is now that of contagion.
And Europe, like the United States, suffered maximum unemployment. But we have just experienced a crisis in which governments are struggling to pay their debt. And so many voices were raised to say no, regardless of the problem of unemployment. What we want to do is worry about balancing the budget.
And I argued, first of all, that there was really no urgency about the debt, but also that this confidence that cutting public spending and demanding austerity measures would work because other people would feel more self-confident and increase their spending. the wrong thing to do. And I think my lasting contribution to the language of economics lies in the fact that I called this trust the trust fairy. I think that in 50 years, if other people try hard not to forget one word that stays with me, Let it be the “confidence fairy. “
And he was right. In fact, it turns out that in fact, cutting government spending in the face of high unemployment leads to even higher unemployment. And the question of accepting it as true didn’t work at all. And it turned out that all this austerity was unnecessary and incredibly harmful. The elites actually let the people, the public, and there was a point of arrogance and contempt that really hurt them.
So my perception of what happened is largely because we stopped trusting our leaders. Time and time again we have been betrayed, in one way or another, through political leaders and, to some extent, business leaders. We thought they knew what they were doing. We believed they had our most productive interests at heart, and many other people believed it too. And it turned out not.
Last word for readers: Other people feel very green with envy and abandoned by elites, and for many smart reasons. But that doesn’t mean you deserve to let resentment take over your view of politics. This means you’ll have to Let the reflected image inform your point of view. You deserve to take a look at what makes sense. Don’t accept authority as truth, but that doesn’t mean everything other people in authority say is wrong.
Trust logic. Trust, evidence. Go with what makes sense. And we can do much more. In some cases, we literally did a lot more. Obamacare worked. So try to pay attention to other people who seem knowledgeable and fair to you and not just pushy and telling you what to do, and that’s a much better chance of getting to the right place.
[MUSIC PLAYBACK]
If you liked this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
The screen is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vishakha Dharba, Phoebe Lett, Kristina Samulewski and Jillian Weinberger. It is edited by Kaari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie-Rose Strasser.
Engineering, mixing and original music through Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carole Sabouraud and Efim Shapiro. Additional music via Aman Sahota. The fact-checking team is comprised of Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy through Shannon Busta, Kristina Samulewski and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of “Times Opinion Audio” is Annie-Rose Strasser.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
transcription
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.
This is “The Opinions,” a show featuring a mix of voices from “The New York Times Opinion. ” You already heard the news. This is what to do about it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let’s put an end to this. Me to get into the pool. [MUSIC PLAYBACK]
My calling is Paul Krugman, I retired as a columnist for the “New York Times”. I wrote my last column, and here are some reflections on 25 years in the “New York Times. “
[MUSIC PLAYING] There’s a lot of things I wrote that I’m proud of. But I think what I’m proud of most is that I took some unpopular and certainly contrarian positions. So I like to think that while I’ve staked out a lot of positions and sometimes been willing to stick my neck out, that I’ve always done it based on evidence that I tried to share with the readers.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I recruited in the early 2000s and I think it’s very difficult, especially for young people, to master the mentality that we had, which was incredibly optimistic. I literally said we have a lot of other people writing about the Middle East, but it’s not as engaging. And let’s get someone to write about economics, because in economics there were all these fun, sexy things happening. Some things seemed silly, but that’s okay. And it turned out that the Middle East was a little more attractive than anyone imagined at the time.
But overall, Americans were very positive about the future. A clear majority of people think the country is going in the right direction. We have seen many successes in economic development. Not everything is wonderful, but the general feeling is very good.
These days, deep down, everyone is irritated. Workers feel betrayed by the elites. Billionaires feel betrayed because why don’t other people like them?This is how this great deterioration in the mood of the nation can be understood. So I chose five columns that capture themes that I thought they were and that, in hindsight, appear on the way to where we are.
So one of the columns, I think, that illustrates a pivot point in changing optimism and faith in our leaders was one I wrote about the Iraq war. I shouldn’t have been writing about Iraq. This was not my department. I was hired to write about economics. But I found myself feeling that I had to write about Iraq because no one else was — not in what I thought was a clear-eyed way.
There are many myths about the atmosphere of national unity after 9/11. This has never happened. I there. I’m attentive. Attempts to exploit 9/11 for political gain began literally while the Pentagon was still burning. And furthermore, I paid close attention to what now seemed like meaningless economic debates, but to the tax cut debates, in which a tendency had been detected towards the dishonest, misleading and selective presentation of evidence on economic issues, and the presentation of evidence in favor of war looked precisely like this.
Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof to use biological or chemical or a nuclear weapon, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
So I got into writing about Iraq and saying, much more plainly, I think, than anybody else on a major opinion page, this is a bogus case for war. And I was deeply relieved when everybody became cynical about the war, and I didn’t have to play that role anymore. But something had gone very wrong. Politicians have never been 100 percent honest. But the level of dishonesty was something new.
So during the period from around 2002-2003, the housing prices in the United States began just soaring.
On Friday, the economic report focuses on its cash. And today we’ll continue to look at the money you’d possibly like to spend on a home. Prices soared more than 100 percent in Montclair, New Jersey, and 170 percent in San Diego.
Much of the explosion in space costs reflects new lending strategies. Subprime mortgages (and it’s a long story about what that meant), however, essentially the criteria for lending to home buyers were significantly more comfortable. And when space costs began to come down to Earth, it not only meant that many other people found they had mortgages they couldn’t pay, but it also meant that enormous pressures were placed on the banking system. That’s why I have a column about the real estate bubble because it’s just starting to lose steam.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I could see right away that housing had become a huge driver of the US economy, and it was clearly not sustainable. We were going to be in trouble. I didn’t foresee that it would be as bad as it turned out to be, but it was clear. And it was an extremely unpopular view. I may have gotten more hate mail over calling the housing bubble than anything else I’ve written. A lot of people were financially and psychologically invested in the idea that using complicated financial footwork to invest in housing was a great idea.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I was reasonably sure that it would lead to a recession. What I did not realize — I fault myself for this — was that I didn’t realize how much trouble we’d have in banking. I thought there was a problem, but it was a much bigger problem than even I had imagined.
It was a manic Monday in the financial markets. The Dow tumbled more than 500 points after two pillars of the street tumbled over the weekend.
The news from Wall Street has shaken the confidence of the rest of Americans in our economy.
Which brings us to 2008. Obama was elected. He inherited a massive financial crisis, and the banks were bailed out. It was essential that the banks be bailed out because we needed them to keep functioning. But they were bailed out in ways that arguably let people who were responsible for the crisis get off scot-free.
And other people felt betrayed by the banks. They felt that some people had been rescued and others had not. It was an inherently problematic time and deepened the feeling of distrust. The point of political hostility was enormous.
That’s why we want a U. S. stimulus and reinvestment plan that only. . .
And Obama presented a fiscal stimulus plan, which had high numbers in absolute terms, but if it was actually approved, it seemed to me that it was about a third of what was literally appropriate. So, on the one hand, there were other people screaming: Oh my God, 700 billion dollars!How can we do that? Actually, the answer is quite simple.
So the article I wrote said, “Hey, this deserves to be $2 trillion. Why don’t we do this? And that sets the stage for a weak recovery and years of peak unemployment, which will further disillusion other people. And one of the funniest things is that, politically, the other Obama staff were aware that they might be underestimated, but they believed, I think, incredibly naively, that they could simply go back to Congress to get more if the initial stimulus measures They were successful. It is effective. be inappropriate.
And I warned, from the beginning, that when they come back for more, they will say no, the lesson of what has happened so far is that fiscal for the economy does not work, so more of that. And that’s some of what happened. We found ourselves in this type of political and economic trap. It also meant that we had actually made mistakes as a country. And once again, the public had even less confidence in our leadership.
[MUSIC PLAYBACK]
As bad as the currency crisis and as inadequate as the recovery, at least initially, one of Obama’s wonderful victories is the Affordable Care Act. And in 2009, I wrote a column explaining that this plan was very similar to a plan that had already been implemented in Massachusetts.
And you know what, it works in Massachusetts and it will work nationally. Basically, in this case, accept it as true with your leaders. In fact, they know what they are doing and it is a well thought out plan. And this was at a time when a crisis was foreseen in which everything would collapse. And I said no. And thank God that’s not the case.
[MUSIC PLAYBACK]
And, look, there are a lot of people who played some role in getting it across the finish line. I like to think that I played some small part in that. They needed public voices, public intellectuals saying this plan makes sense, this is a good plan. I actually — I talked to people in the administration at the time.
And some of them were literally invested in that I was a purist, that I would say no, that we literally deserve to have single payer, that we deserve to have Medicare for all, which I think would be a fantastic system, but I knew it would be. It won’t happen. And the fact that I came out in the Times and said, This is a smart plan, this is the smartest plan we’ll probably ever have, and it’s worth it.
I mean, obviously President Obama was successful. Nancy Pelosi fought for the votes. They have much greater credit. But I think I at least helped it move forward a little.
So the last column in this five-part series was written in 2010, just as I heard that there was beginning to be a consensus among the elites about a desire to cut spending, which I thought completely untrue, which is a terrible idea, that it would get worse. economic crisis and delaying recovery. And that’s what happened.
So we had the currency crisis of 2008, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and everything else, which was terrifying. But then we had a second wave of crisis in Europe when Greece suddenly hit the wall.
On Wednesday morning, the euro reached a fresh one-year low against the dollar. Along with the stench of Greek economic decay, now comes the fear of contagion.
And Europe, like the United States, was suffering from high unemployment. But we just had a crisis with governments having trouble paying their debt. And so there were a lot of voices saying, no, never mind the unemployment thing. What we need to do is worry about balancing the budget.
And I argued, first of all, that there wasn’t really any urgency with regard to debt, but also that this confidence that government spending cuts and austerity demands would work differently because other people would feel more confident and increase their spending. This was precisely the wrong thing to do. And I think my most enduring contribution to the language of economics is that I call this trust in accepting as true a fairy. I think that in 50 years, if other people try not to forget a word that sticks with me, it will be “confidence fairy”.
And he was right. In fact, it turns out that in fact, cutting government spending in the face of high unemployment leads to even higher unemployment. And the question of accepting it as true didn’t work at all. And it turned out that all this austerity was unnecessary and incredibly harmful. The elites actually let the people, the public, and there was a point of arrogance and contempt that really hurt them.
So my overview of what went wrong is that a lot of it has to do with the fact that we stopped trusting our leaders. Again and again, we were, one way or another, betrayed by both political leaders and, to some extent, business leaders. That we thought they knew what they were doing. We thought they had our best interests at heart, or many people did. And it turned out that they didn’t.
A final word for readers: Other people feel very green with envy and abandoned by elites, and for many intelligent reasons. But that doesn’t mean you deserve to let resentment determine your view of politics. This means you will have to let the image consultant reflect your point of view. You deserve to take a look at what makes sense. Don’t accept it as true with authority, but that doesn’t mean everything other people in authority say is wrong.
Trust logic. Trust, evidence. Go for what actually seems to make sense. And we can do much better. In some cases, we really have done much better. Obamacare worked. So try to listen to people who sound like they’re knowledgeable and sound like they’re being honest with you and not just being arrogant and trying to tell you what to do, and that’s a much better chance of getting to the right place.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
If you liked this show, find it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This exhibition is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vishakha Dharba, Phoebe Lett, Kristina Samulewski, and Jillian Weinberger. It is edited by Kaari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie-Rose Strasser.
Engineering, mixing and original music through Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carole Sabouraud and Efim Shapiro. Additional music via Aman Sahota. The fact-checking team is comprised of Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy through Shannon Busta, Kristina Samulewski and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of “Times Opinion Audio” is Annie-Rose Strasser.
[MUSIC PLAYBACK]
By Paul Krugman
Produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd
When Paul Krugman was hired as a Times opinion columnist, Americans were positive and the economy was full of promising and fun stories. But that temporarily replaced him and he continued the journey, even if it meant taking risks.
In this audio essay, Krugman discusses the most important news stories of his career and reflects on their relevance today.
Between 2003 and 2010, their five most sensible teams are:
“Issues to highlight”
“That whistle”
“The Obama Gap”
“After the approval of the reform”
“Myths of austerity”
(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available within 24 hours of publication in the audio player above.)
Thoughts? Email us at theopinions@nytimes. com.
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd. Edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixed by Pat McCusker. Original music by Isaac Jones, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact Checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience Strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
The Times is committed to publishing a variety of letters to the editor. We’d love to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letter@nytimes. com.
Follow the New York Times opinion segment on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X, and Threads.
Paul Krugman has been an opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008 for his paintings on foreign industry and economic geography. @PaulKrugman
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