Ha, just kidding, but didn't I write something
just like this the other day?
...the deficit scolds have come back into their own, decrying any policy that actually involves spending money.
The result, then, will be high unemployment leading into the 2010 elections, and corresponding Democratic losses. These losses will be worse because Obama, by pursuing a uniformly pro-banker policy without even a gesture to popular anger over the bailouts, has ceded populist energy to the right and demoralized the movement that brought him to power.
[...]
...my sense is that to have any hope of breaking out of this trap, Obama and company have to take risks — they have to propose new initiatives that might not pass, and be prepared to run against the do-nothing Republicans if the initiatives fail. That’s not happening now; as best as I can tell, the administration strategy is to insist that only a few minor course corrections are needed, and to wait for the jobs to start coming in.
Actually,
what I wrote was that "Democrats in Congress need to start passing legislation ASAP" (including a
"multi-billion-dollar jobs package" and the diversion of remaining TARP money to "
struggling workers and homeowners") and that they need to "grab some of that populist energy away from Republicans." Close enough to what Krugman's saying, except he's got a Nobel Prize and all I've got is a Masters Degree from GW. ;) But seriously, I don't think it takes much education at all to figure this stuff out. Which of course means that the geniuses in Congress won't figure it out. Argh.
Posts
Lowell:
ReplyDeleteFDR had started to bring the country out of the "depression" by 1936. But in 1938, the Old Bull conservative Southern Democrats persuaded him to attempt to balance the budget; he did so and the country went into an even deeper depression with even greater job loss. Even my father, a coal-miner who worked throughout most of the depression, lost his job in 1938 and did not get full-time employment until 1940, thanks largely to the economic benefits of the lend-lease program to the Allies.
As George Santayana admonished us: "Those who cannot remember the past are condenmned to repeat it."
TomPaine: Excellent comment, there are times to worry about the budget deficit but a severe recession ain't one of 'em. :)
ReplyDeleteOne the pecularities of the way American politics is set up is that while I might not want the government to spend money on getting people in location X a job, I have no object to the government spending money to get ME a job. As someone who has mostly be personally conservative when it comes to spending in her own life, I appreciate an honest and upfront discussion about the deficit and the national debt. I take seriously the issue of a weak dollar. But I also know that in the federal government, just as in my own life, there are times where it is more reasonable and responsible to take on debt and take some risks for a real payoff, a la Keynesian eEconomics for Dummies. (Can't you just see the yellow cover?) I think most Americans can understand that too. If Obama and Democrats push through an aggressive pro-economic package, even with some short term pain, it will pay off in the long term. And not only in the ballot box, as important as that is, but also in people's every day lives.
ReplyDelete