Paul Krugman:Falling Into the Chasm

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/opinion/25krugman.html?ref=paulkrugman

This is what happens when you need to leap over an economic chasm — but either can’t or won’t jump far enough, so that you only get part of the way across.

If Democrats do as badly as expected in next week’s elections, pundits will rush to interpret the results as a referendum on ideology. President Obama moved too far to the left, most will say, even though his actual program — a health care plan very similar to past Republican proposals, a fiscal stimulus that consisted mainly of tax cuts, help for the unemployed and aid to hard-pressed states — was more conservative than his election platform.

(snip)
When Mr. Obama took office, he inherited an economy in dire straits — more dire, it seems, than he or his top economic advisers realized. They knew that America was in the midst of a severe financial crisis. But they don’t seem to have taken on board the lesson of history, which is that major financial crises are normally followed by a protracted period of very high unemployment.

(snip)
The tragedy here is that if voters do turn on Democrats, they will in effect be voting to make things even worse.

[andym]

1. There would be no hope for another stimulus should the GOP gain power in either the House or Senate

If another stimulus package is necessary,then the country will go without one and every citizen will lose.
Moreover, freezing/cutting government spending will tend to lessen a critical source of economic activity, causing further harm.

[geckosfeet]

3. Nonsense. Select coporate entities would get a direct line of credit to the honey pot.

And you and I and every taxpaying schmo in the country will foot the bill.

[Sonoman]

2. The very thing(s) the stupid f##ks don't get.

The very thing(s) they are spewing will be the very thing(s) that will be screwing them.

It never ceases to amaze me.

Sonoman

[bkozumplik]

5. politicians who screw us

never cease to amaze me. Its normal anymore.

[leveymg]

4. The west is is on the path to economic and political suicide, again.

The "post-war era" and prosperity was nice while the phase lasted. Back to Capitalist self-immolation and endless world wars.

[zipplewrath]

6. But to criticize Summers

Is to harbor "blind hatred" of him.

"If you look back now at the economic forecast originally used to justify the Obama economic plan, what’s striking is that forecast’s optimism about the economy’s ability to heal itself. Even without their plan, Obama economists predicted, the unemployment rate would peak at 9 percent, then fall rapidly. Fiscal stimulus was needed only to mitigate the worst — as an “insurance package against catastrophic failure,” as Lawrence Summers, later the administration’s top economist, reportedly said in a memo to the president-elect."

I'm sorry, Summers was wrong, Obama was wrong, and that's not blind hatred, that's an honest assessment of the reality. And that error may cost us the congress. But those who criticized the original appointments will still be just people who "didn't get their pony" around here.

[thereismore]

7. Obama had a chance to get progressive agenda through Congress. After Nov it

might be difficult, if the repigs take the House, and, as a result, he could be in danger in 2012.