Niall Ferguson: Okay, I Admit It—Paul Krugman Was Right

Henry Blodget is co-founder, CEO and Editor-In Chief of Business Insider.

On Friday in Davos, I interviewed Harvard professor Niall Ferguson, who has been very vocal in recent years about how the world is careening down an unsustainable path....

In one key way, Professor Ferguson now concedes, his adversary Paul Krugman has been right: The U.S. can carry a much-higher debt-to-GDP ratio than he thought. In fact, Ferguson now says, even his Harvard colleague Ken Rogoff, who wrote a seminal book about debt crisis called This Time It's Different, may be too pessimistic about the United States.

But Europe, Professor Ferguson says, is still screwed....