Paul Krugman
Credit: Businessweek

While there is plenty of blame to go around for the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis and the failure of U.S. policymakers to sufficiently respond to the crisis, Paul Krugman argued Thursday in the New York Times that the Republican Party deserves the bulk of the condemnation for the extensive job losses and economic sluggishness under President Barack Obama’s two terms.

“We avoided utter disaster, but nonetheless experienced a huge, sustained employment slump, one that inflicted immense human and economic cost — and may well have helped set the stage for our current constitutional crisis,” he said. “Why did the slump go on so long?”

He continued: “There are multiple answers, but the most important factor was politics — cynical, bad-faith obstructionism on the part of the Republican Party.”

President Barack Obama was able to pass a massive stimulus bill that helped avert a calamity on the scale of the Great Depression. But, as Krugman argued at the time, it wasn’t nearly big enough to avoid nearly a decade of unnecessary joblessness. And Republicans refused to lift a finger to help.

“[The] most important reason the great […]