SUMMER UPDATE: Paul Krugman

So this past Monday I had the wonderful opportunity to go into Cambridge, where Paul Krugman and Tom Ashbrook (of NPR) were having a Q&A about Krugman's new book as well as his thoughts on the economy. For those of you who don't know Krugman, he is a Nobel Prize winning economist, author, and columnist for the New York Times.

The Harvard book store event took place in the nearby UU church

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the line to get seats was dozens long, and the entire chuch was packed by the time the event was set to begin. Krugman, one of the more outspoken voices against passivity in our current economic situation, drew greatly from the intellectual community around Harvard Square.

He reiterated many of the points he argues in his weekly columns, such as the need for greater stimulus and the comparison that must be drawn between austerity in the stuttering European economies and the moderate growth in the US economy (which received a stimulus that he called "not big enough").

Krugman's book, End this Depression Now!, is an attempt to persuade the voters in a dysfunctional political grid lock to support increased government spending rather than cuts to help reduce the deficit. According to Krugman, the economic crisis in the US is "easy" to fix, but progress is being single-handedly slowed by starkly polarized leaders and excessive fiscal conservatism.