Paul Krugman on Financial Reform | The Business Desk with Paul Solman | PBS NewsHour

ABOUT US \| LOCAL TV LISTINGS EMAIL PRINT

REGION: North America

TOPIC: Business & Economy

PBS NewsHour

Not a blog but a "q-and-a" (pronounced "quanda"), this page is about the basics of economics. Its premise: there are no stupid q's. And if some a's seem dim, take heart: I can brighten them up in response to objections, corrections, refinements. Comments on posts feature yours, and my responses. Enough of you now frequent and query the quanda that I post most every day. Haven't seen your q yet? Send it again. All a's should be taken with a shaker of sodium chloride, if not a Lot's-wife's-worth. And speaking of salt, the mustache and "hair" in the photo has a lot less of that condiment, and rather more pepper, than can be seen on TV. Think of it as time travel.

« Previous Entry | Main | Next Entry »

Paul Krugman on Financial Reform

Paul Solman: At January's annual economics meeting in Atlanta, we sat down one-on-one with a variety of intriguing economists, none of whom I've known longer than Paul Krugman.

I first interviewed him in the early 1980s, back when the NewsHour was 30 minutes long and I was working locally at WGBH, Boston; Krugman, at MIT. He surprised me from the get-go, expressing great skepticism at the accepted wisdom of the era: that Japan's so-called "industrial policy" of managing its economy would prove beneficent.

"Why should we assume a bunch of bureaucrats have special insight into economic policy?" he asked on camera (wording approximate). "I don't."

Here, he weighs in on an especially timely topic, given the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission grilling the heads of the nation's biggest banks yesterday and the heads of the FDIC and SEC today: What should we do about our financial institutions? How should we approach reform?

Also, you can watch the Shultz piece I mention in the interview here.

-- Posted January 14, 2010 | Comments ( ) | Permalink