Wed Mar 03, 2010 at 19:00:46 PM EST
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When did American politics start to feel particularly hopeless and depressing? Now I realize it was January 27, after Obama's State of the Union address. Because that was when we found out that the President had decided, no matter how much sense it made economically, not to fight the economic fight for the rest of us. Last year's stimulus package would be 'it', economic populist policy was all played out as far as he was concerned. Dean Baker summarized immediately after the SOTU (emphasis added):
President Obama['s] agenda is not bold enough to address the severity of the problems facing the economy and the country's workers.
The unemployment rate is currently in double-digits. The newest projections from the Congressional Budget Office show the unemployment rate staying above 8.0 percent until well into 2012 and not falling back to normal levels until 2014. This is a crisis for tens of millions of workers who will face unemployment solely as a result of bad economic policy and Wall Street greed.
We know the mechanisms through which we can expand the economy and bring the unemployment rate down: a much larger stimulus, more expansionary monetary policy from the Fed, and a lower dollar to bring down the trade deficit. . . .
All of these policies face serious political obstacles, but it is the President's responsibility to tell the truth to the country and to press for the policies necessary to right the economy. President Obama has apparently chosen not to fight this fight. If it is not possible to get the policies needed to restore full employment back on the political agenda, then tens of millions of people will suffer needlessly for years to come.
Instead of leading the fight that needed to be fought, Obama attempts at least rhetorically to be the nation's number one deficit hawk. Baker comments (emphasis added): |
| fairleft :: Choosing not to fight the fight |
There would be no short-term or long-term benefit from reducing the current deficit. . . . If the budget deficit were smaller we would see higher levels of unemployment.
This is all very depressing for anyone keeping even approximate track of our country's politics. Deficit hawk economic 'thinking' dominates the salons of the Washington elite, and entirely predictably Obama gives voice to it, trying to do some old-fashioned Clinton-style triangulating. This even though deficit reduction will have a catastrophic impact on the U.S. economy in the midst of its worst downturn since the Great Depression. I mean, come on. We know we need much more stimulus and ferchrissake not cut backs, but Obama seems confidently ignorant of that fact. Or just doesn't care, not gonna fight that fight.
Of course, the news these days is all broke state govts and massive cutbacks. Not just depressing in its own right, but depressing as hugely NOT what governments need to be doing in a country with 10% official unemployment and real unemployment over 16%.
Adding news from the states to the deficit hawkism coming from the White House, the national mood is understandably depressed and fatalistic. I don't see any way out myself. Okay, yeah, long term mebbe, but this year can we the rabble impact national economic policy, turning it toward basic rationality? Well, no, not unless things quickly get far worse economically, which probly won't happen and nobody wants. |
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