Krugman describes how he began his career completely apolitically — he was called “ideologically colorblind” — by Newsweek — and he worked as a staffer in the Reagan White House. In the 1990s, he started writing a popular economic column for Slate, and then in 2000 moved to the New York Times. It was only during the George W. Bush administration he became much more political oriented and partisan.
According to Krugman, today’s Right-Wing is missing the reasonable conservatives like Harvard’s Martin Feldstein – people who can make coherent arguments base on actual facts and provable theory. In the 1980s, we had real arguments about real issues. Today, the room for rationality seems to have disappeared on the right, according to Krugman. He believes “Zombie Ideas” (along with Donald Trump) has taken over the GOP. It makes it nearly impossible to have any sort of bi-partisan legislation go forward.
We discuss how his real life persona is so very different from what people imagine him to be like based on his written columns. He is a “pussycat,” very different from that public appearance.
His favorite books can be seen here; A transcript of our conversation will be available here next week.
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Next week, with Brian Deese, Global head of Sustainable Investing for Blackrock.