Paul Krugman so often gives eloquent voice to common sense:
And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach — a feeling that America just isn’t rising to the greatest economic challenge in 70 years. The best may not lack all conviction, but they seem alarmingly willing to settle for half-measures. And the worst are, as ever, full of passionate intensity, oblivious to the grotesque failure of their doctrine in practice.
There’s still time to turn this around. But Mr. Obama has to be stronger looking forward. Otherwise, the verdict on this crisis might be that no, we can’t.
Well said; I’ve been amazed at all the Krugman haters coming out of the woodwork lately and as far as I can tell all the man has ever done was to be correct about issues. This laughable debate over ideology that’s supposedly raging between ‘fiscally conservative’ economists of the “Chicago School” (who are Lassiez- Faire till death, it seems) and sane, objective economists like Krugman or Brad DeLong ( who have been named the “New Keynesians” by pundits just to spice up a non existent debate, as if two eternal enemies are doing battle once again ) is PATHETIC; we are in way too deep for such bulls**t at this stage of the game.
All the republicans or “Chicago School” Economists can apparently come up with as an economic remedy are tax cuts, and anyone who knows even a little about economics knows that in reality TAX CUTS DON’T STIMULATE S**T, CREATE ANY QUALITY JOBS, THEY NEVER HAVE IN THE PAST AND THEY NEVER WILL IN THE FUTURE!!! Yet columnists like Dennis Whittle of the frikkin’ Huffington Post of all places writes garbage like this: “Clive Crook in the FT calling Paul Krugman and Robert Barro on the carpet for their recent columns in the NYT and WSJ. He goes on to say:
“Economics outside the academy has become the continuation of politics by other means…Mr Krugman gives liberals the economics they want. Mr Barro gives conservatives the same service. They narrow or deny the common ground.”
“Krugman and Barro both responded to Clive indignantly here, and the tone of their responses only proves Clive’s point.
“But I don’t agree with Clive that people like Krugman and Barro act differently inside the academy. My own experience is that the petulance on display at academic conferences often meets or exceeds that on display in the NYT and WSJ. It makes me wonder why so many very smart people have such fragile egos. Sadly, those egos serve to obscure rather than advance our understanding of the world.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-whittle/settle-down-boys_b_166425.html
Republicans KNOW they’re being disingenuous about the effects they want to get from Tax Cuts when they talk over and over about adding them to the Stimulus Package, while they scream like bloody madmen about any increases in ‘entitlement’ spending, even though they damn well know increasing entitlement spending is one of the best methods of stimulating the economy in our power that’s been proven to work.
Yet instead they cry over computerized health records and food stamp increases knowing it’s all a bunch of lies (Tax Cuts included); and cretins like Whittle, Karl Rove, David Brooks, George Will, Kathleen Parker, etc., etc., have the gall to treat the republican fiscal ideology like it’s worked and is deserving of respect, while trashing honest Nobel Prize Winners like Krugman.
We truly have become a nation of ideological dyslexics….