by Calculated Risk on 12/18/2009 03:08:00 PM

"The 1980s trained macroeconomics -- like Greg Mankiw and Ben Bernanke and so forth -- became a very complacent group, very ill adapted to meet with a completely unpredictable and new situation, such as we've had. I looked up ... Mankiw's bestseller, both the macro book and his introductory textbook, I went through the index to look for liquidity trap. It wasn't there!"
Paul Samuelson, June 2009

Here is an interview with Paul Samuelson from June (Dr. Samuelson passed away last weekend at the age of 94):

An Interview With Paul Samuelson, Part One (ht Jonathan)

An Interview With Paul Samuelson, Part Two

On Greenspan and the stock bubble:

"I can remember when some of us -- and I remember there were a lot of us in the late 90s -- said you should do something about the stock bubble. And he kind of said, 'look, reasonable men are putting their money into these things -- who are we to second guess them?' Well, reasonable men are not reasonable when you're in the bubbles which have characterized capitalism since the beginning of time."