Expert economic forecasting with P. Krugman and his guest

[BootinUp]

How Worried Should We Be About the Economy?

A conversation with Neil Dutta
Paul Krugman
Mar 15, 2025
Suddenly, everyone is pessimistic. The “Trump bump” in stocks seems like a distant memory; consumer confidence has plunged; there’s recession talk everywhere.

But is the pessimism overdone? Honestly, I don’t fully trust my own judgment here. They actually don’t teach macroeconomic forecasting in graduate school; also, partisanship is a hell of a drug, and I don’t trust myself to be immune.

So I wanted to talk to someone who assesses macroeconomic risks for a living and has a track record of not getting carried away. I’ve followed Neil Dutta of Renaissance Macro for a while, and was struck by a recent article in which he talked calmly about the reasons he sees bigger downside risks. So here’s a conversation in which we talk all about that, including some interesting arguments to the effect that we’d be facing significant headwinds even without Trump-generated uncertainty. Transcript follows.

https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/how-worried-should-we-be-about-the