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Hey, Paul Krugman, Are You Reading Blue Virginia?

Monday, November 30, 2009

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.