by Calculated Risk on 6/14/2009 09:37:00 AM

From The Observer: Paul Krugman's fear for lost decade (ht Jonathan)

A few excerpts:

Krugman: The risk of a full, all-out Great Depression - utter collapse of everything - has receded a lot in the past few months. But this first year of crisis has been far worse than anything that happened in Japan during the last decade, so in some sense we already have much worse than anything the Japanese went through. The risk for long stagnation is really high.

And on the stimulus:

Will Hutton: [I]s Obama doing enough on fiscal policy?

PK: Well we have a stimulus which is a little over 5% of one year's GDP but some of it is not real - something that was going to happen anyway and not very stimulative. So it's really about 4% of GDP of genuine stimulus, but spread over two and a half years. So, it's actually quite a lot less than what I was arguing for.

WH: So, will it be sufficient?

PK: Well, sufficient to actually restore full employment would probably have to be 5% or more. More than we have would certainly be a good thing. It actually might happen. You know, the buzz I'm getting is that a second-round stimulus might well come on the agenda.