Paul Krugman doubled down on criticism of Ben Bernanke on Sunday, telling ABC's "This Week" that the Fed Chairman has "been assimilated by the Borg."
“I think what’s happened to Bernanke, as they say, he’s been assimilated by the Borg," he said. "He’s become more concerned, probably unconsciously, with defending the Fed’s institutional safety, because it’s the apostle of price stability, than with doing whatever he can to get this economy moving. Which if he’d listened to Professor Bernanke, himself 10 years ago, he would know that he was supposed to be doing more.”
The New York Times' columnist's comments echoed ones he made in a Times Magazine piece last week titled "Earth to Ben Bernanke."
In the piece, he accused Bernanke of ignoring the economic advice he championed when he was a professor at Princeton University. Krugman blamed the nation's continuing economic issues on Bernanke's failure to take actions he was expected to take, such as buying a bigger portion of the government's debt.
On "This Week", Krugman urged Bernanke to focus more on the growing unemployment rate.
“Allowing unemployment to stay near 9 percent, allowing the number of long-term unemployed to be 4 million, which it hasn’t been since the 1930s, which is destroying skills, destroying the attachment of workers to the workforce," he said.