Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said Monday that the tepid response to the current economic crisis could ruin the United States and Europe.

“We are living through a time where we face an enormous economic challenge,” he told RT’s Thom Hartmann. “We are facing — obviously — the worst challenge in 80 years and we are totally mucking up the response. We’re doing a terrible job. We’re failing to deal with it. All of the people, the respectable people, the serious people, have made a total hash of this. That is a recipe for radicalism. It is a recipe for breakdown.”

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Krugman noted that the massive demonstrations in parts of Europe were reminiscent of the 1930s.

“There are a lot of ugly forces being unleashed in our societies on both sides of the Atlantic because our economic policy has been such a dismal failure, because we are refusing to listen to the lessons of history. We may look back at this thirty years from now and say, ‘That is when it all fell apart.’ And by all, I don’t just mean the economy.”

Watch video, courtesy of RT, below: