Paul Krugman is so frustrated by the lack of support for another round of stimulus spending that he's now calling for a fake alien invasion of the United States to spur a World War II-style defense buildup.
Krugman was a guest on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on Sunday. Speaking with Zakaria and Harvard economist Ken Rogoff, he made the same case he has been making for years--that deficits are not the top economic concern of the day. Krugman noted that the effort of World War II helped end the Great Depression, and joked that something similar was needed today.
"If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months," he said. "And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren't any aliens, we'd be better--"
"We need Orson Welles, is what you're saying," Rogoff cut in.
"There was a 'Twilight Zone' episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace," Krugman said. "Well, this time, we don't need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus."
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