On the prospect of US deflation by Paul Krugman

Krugman in his post Damnification explains:

But there’s at least one more form of damnification that has me really worried: the paradox of deflation. An individual company or worker can preserve a business or a job by accepting a lower price; but when everyone does it, we get debt deflation — a rising real burden of debt, which weighs on the economy — and also start to have deflationary expectations built into lending and investment decisions, which further depresses the economy. And once you’re in a deflationary trap, it’s very hard to get out.

and:

This really should be the key point in the stimulus debate. Yes, the effects of fiscal policy are uncertain; yes, running up large debts is risky; but doing nothing is even riskier, because there’s a high probability that if we don’t act strongly deflation will get embedded in the economy. We may be damned if we do, but we’ll almost surely be damnified if we don’t.