One of the three books we are looking at together this term is by Paul Krugman. As the cover of the book notes, he was a Nobel-Prize winning economist before he became a New York Times columnist. (Actually, he may have won the Prize after becoming a columnist, but the point is his research earned the prize before he went into more regular punditry.)
It may be worth following his op-eds, which come out a couple of times a week. Fortunately, perhaps, he almost always writes on the same things. Over and over. (I am only half-critical of this, because given our national attention span and rapidly-spinning news cycles, there is a good case for repeatedly stressing the same fundamentals with some frequency.)
Main themes of his work include monetary policy and fiscal policy, both of which we will discuss at length. (He is also partisan in his politics, in ways I will leave to you to reflect upon.)
A fascinating thing is how overtly political monetary policy has become in recent years. As we will discuss later, this is basically the amount of "money" that circulates in the economy, as shaped in lage part by the rate of interest charged by the central bank (the Federal Reserve) uses to anchor the banking system. Sounds like relatively technical stuff that won't keep many Americans up at night. Except it is hugely influential and hugely divisive.
Krugman has been a big proponent of very "loose" monetary policy and has been critical of many others (famously, Rick Santelli of CNBC, though he is not the only one) who have been critical of the Federal Reserve for begin too loose. This means basically that Krugman favors very low interest rates and substantial action by the Fed to respond to economic weakness, while Santelli and others would favor interest rates being increased (preferably yesterday, if not earlier). Have a look at Krugman's post today. There is more we could say about this, but maybe the best is just to discuss on Tuesday.
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