Friday, August 19, 2011

And Krugman Bites

He's more restrained than I would be if I were always right, and most others always wrong;

I hear that there was some action in the markets yesterday.

OK, seriously: things are looking really terrible, And crucially, they’re looking terrible in the wrong way, at least if you wanted to believe that political and policy debate over the past year and a half made any sense at all. We’ve been utterly preoccupied with deficits, deficits, deficits; there was supposedly a crisis looming, but a crisis that would take the form of an attack by the bond vigilantes.

And here we are, with markets now deeply worried not by deficits but by stalling growth, fearing not fiscal profligacy but fiscal austerity, and with interest rates at historic lows.

Instead of turning into Greece, we’ve turned into Japan, except much worse. And policy is replaying 1937.

In the past, you could make excuses on the grounds of ignorance. In the 1930s they didn’t have basic macroeconomics. Even in Japan in the 1990s you could argue that it took a long time to realize that the liquidity trap was a real possibility in the modern world.

But we came into this crisis with a pretty good understanding of what was at stake and pretty good analysis of the policy options — yet policy makers and, I’m sorry to say, many economists just chose to ignore all that and go with their prejudices instead.

And the worst of it is that the people who got this so wrong have not and probably won’t admit to their awesome wrongness; on the contrary, they’ll dig in. And the Lesser Depression will go on and on and on.


/adding

There is no great mystery why the rich are ripping off everyone else, and governments are standing behind it. It's not a surprise that government response to that is to implement "austerity" measures that most negatively impact that poor and middle class.

What is odd.. is that maybe the super-rich have bitten off a bit too big a piece of the pie this time... as Greenwald has pointed out, governments are more interested in figuring out how to head off the inevitable backlash by taking control of the devices people use to organize.

It won't work, of course. If things get a bit worse, there might be a rise in social unrest, but Americans are, by and large, pacified by now. There really is no justice in this world, and those that are most aggrieved would bear the brunt of the confrontation should it happen.

It would make for some exciting drama though.

....

Oh and.. the West Point graduate, who was booted out of the military for being gay is being charged with federal crimes for protesting at the White House.

He's also being chased for money by the army because he didn't complete his deployment - because the army booted him out of the service.

How can I write a letter to the Worst President Ever? I want to ask him for the money I donated to his campaign back.

I know.. it won't happen.

Still - if we can all work to make sure that Obama loses the election, that would send a message and properly shame and embarrass him. The problem is, the republicans seem hell bent on nominating the craziest person they can find. While I personally would find that quite okay, Obama might actually beat the likes of a Michelle Bachmann.

Chis Christie is a jackass, and clearly not qualified for the job, but he would probably beat Obama, and I think that's more important than what he would do once elected. Obama is a scumbag and has set back Liberal politics and ideology for a very long time. Might as well let a republican wreak havoc for a while.

I'm still amazed that Obama turned out to be so bad. It's like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush all rolled into one.

1 comment:

Kor said...

On the upside, the result of your dollar tanking allowed me to buy a new Marantz AV receiver for $800 less than what it would have cost me a year ago. :D

Makes the Yamaha look shameful by comparison.