The Politico reports that he called Trump the “mother of all adverse effects,” and predicted that the GOP nominee’s administration could quickly undo the progress that the markets around the world have made in the eight years since the financial crisis.
“Under any circumstances, putting an irresponsible, ignorant man who takes his advice from all the wrong people in charge of the nation with the world’s most important economy would be very bad news,” he wrote.
“What makes it especially bad right now, however, is the fundamentally fragile state much of the world is still in.”
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Krugman’s pessimistic view comes in the wake of a more than 800-point plunge in U.S. stock futures that coincided with Trump’s increasingly strong showing in the polls. Trump has repeatedly attacked the Federal Reserve, accusing Chairwoman Janet Yellen of keeping interest rates low in a bid to help the economy and get Hillary Clinton elected.
“Now comes the mother of all adverse effects — and what it brings with it is a regime that will be ignorant of economic policy and hostile to any effort to make it work,” Krugman wrote. “So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened.”