Nobel economists Krugman and Stiglitz see reasonably high chance economy will contract in 2010

Jake Tapper at ABC reports that Krugman says there's a "reasonably high chance," though less than 50-50 odds, that the economy will contract again in 2010. Stiglitz, as I recall, was a bit more concerned.

Krugman says a good portion of our current recovery is due to the stimulus package, which will fade out in the second half of 2010. Krugman says he's "really worried" about the second half of 2010. Stiglitz says we need another stimulus package. Just as a reminder, the experts were saying that the first stimulus needed to be on the order of $1.5 to $2 trillion. Instead it was a bit over $700bn, and 40% of that went to tax cuts that don't carry as much stimulus bang for the buck. The problem now is that Democrats haven't done a very good job defending the first stimulus since its passage, so I think it's politically very difficult to pass a second one. Or at the very least it's going to take the kind of concerted campaign that the Obama people don't like, or don't know how, to do. So the Dems, and all of us really, are a tad screwed if Krugman and Stiglitz are right.