"I should have seen it coming," said Krugman.
"I berate myself for not understanding the extent to which we have these financial domino effects.
I saw there would be a burst bubble and there would be a lot of pain, but I didn't realize how big the pain would be.
"
Krugman, a Princeton University professor and a New York Times columnist, has worked intensely on the impact of free trade and globalization, as well as the driving forces behind urbanization, the Nobel citation said.
He has said he is "extremely terrified" of the financial crisis, and told NPR on Monday that he wondered how economists and politicians "could have been so blind.
"
"We created a financial system that basically outgrew the defense we created back in the 1930s to protect against crises. We should have understood that because the system had outgrown those defenses, there was the possibility of another one.
"But very few people saw it coming," he said.
Krugman told NPR he "had no anticipation" he was