Congress of Cowards 2
Passing the bucks:
No mention is made in the story that most economists think that, right now, the national debt is not the issue; the recession is. Radio Times considered this issue last week. From the website:
All estimates point to a growing economy, but the recovery is not quite fast enough for average Americans to feel the improvement. We talk about economic policies – what’s worked and not worked and what it will take to get Americans working and spending again. Our guests are economists JAMES GALBRAITH and LARRY MISHEL.
Go to the website and search the archives for December 1, 2009, Hour One, or listen here (mp3).
Afterthought: This is the RepubliBlueDog way:
- Be scared. Think small.
December 9, 2009 at 7:16 pm
These economists who don’t think the deficit or debt are the problem – are they the same economists who didn’t see the recession coming and then denied it was here? The same ones who praised and endorsed financial “innovation” of the past decade? No one saw all of this coming. Except for the people who saw it coming. If you want to know what’s next, take a look at who predicted this in the first place and see what they think will happen next. You should look into what a currency crisis looks like. Argentina earlier in the decade is a good start. There are lots of good examples to be found.
December 10, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Did you listen to the show?
They don’t think the deficit is the immediate problem.
The immediate problem is the recession.
Deepening the recession by panicking over the deficit will not help the deficit, it will further aggravate it.
Fixing the recession will help the deficit and provide the resources for dealing with the deficit.
Keynesian economics is rather simple: spend money to fix recessions; tax in good times to pay down deficits.
RepubliBlueDog economics is also simple, as demonstrated over the past thirty years: spend money all the time for wars, cut taxes all the time to help the rich, don’t raise taxes when times are good, don’t worry about deficits unless they help the poor.