David ([info]sageofgodalming) wrote,
@ 2009-03-19 23:17:00
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Galbraith
Sorry to sound like a cracked record (but what else is there to talk about?), but here's a manifesto for America (and the rest of us).

BTW, see what I mean about Geithner and Obama? Galbraith weighs all these emanations of Rubin in the balance and finds them wanting, but it depends on Obama, not them.

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[info]happy_potterer
2009-03-20 07:16 pm UTC (link)
Oh yeah. The buck stops with Obama. I think the lesson he should take from the stimulus bill is that going for bipartisan support only saddled him with tax cuts he didn't want and gained him paltry votes. It reminds me of the Kyoto Accords: the US watered them down and watered them down in order to make them palatable to the Senate (i.e., the Republicans), but the Senate didn't ratify them anyway (something that the administration must have known was going to happen), so the rest of the world should've just set the standards it wanted.

Obama should keep talking to these folks (except Richard Burr, who seems to have him confused with Michael Jordan--well, they look alike, don't they?), but he can pass this stuff without their votes and he's probably going to have to. Better to concentrate on his own party, which wants to be on his side almost as much as it wants to be on the successful side. They're getting nervous; well, sure, most of them come up for election in a year and a half. Maybe he needs to remind the nation that FDR's programs turned things around in about four years. This isn't the Great Depression, but even a smaller crisis than that won't be fixed fast enough for people who expect the president to dust off his hands and say "all fixed!" after 60 days. One day I'll write a book called ADHD Nation, if I can concentrate long enough.

FDR got re-elected anyway, in the meantime, in the midst of the mess, and before the war. I think the campaign office ought to be studying how he did it, and report back to the economic team so they can relax and do the job right.

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[info]sageofgodalming
2009-03-20 09:28 pm UTC (link)
Ah, yes, bipartisanship. Obama's electoral genius was to call out the culture war as a fake war - his governing Achilles heel is not to realise it was a cover for a real class war.

On timing, he's already come perilously close to boxing himself in on deficit reduction by 2012.

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[info]judyserenity
2009-03-22 06:53 am UTC (link)
I think the campaign office ought to be studying how he did it, and report back to the economic team so they can relax and do the job right.

Well, according to Galbraith, it was the massive work programs, which brought unemployment down from 25% to 10%. Sounds good to me!

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[info]judyserenity
2009-03-22 06:53 am UTC (link)
Well, I have to say that essay really adds new meaning to calling economics "The Dismal Science" -- Galbraith thinks the current economic models are dismally inadequate to describe what's happening, AND he is projecting a dismal economic future. (The US economy might recover in TWENTY YEARS or a bit longer? Yikes!!!)

I certainly hope Galbraith is wrong about the scope of the crisis. However, I agree with him that the remedy should be "bottom up" rather than "top down." That is, the current approach of giving astronomical sums of money to banks in the hopes of making them solvent and functional is clearly not working -- it's like trying to fill in a bottomless pit by throwing dollars in -- and instead we need to focus on making *consumers* whole, via mechanisms such as large jobs programs and more mortgage relief. (As an aside, one thing Galbraith didn't mention was big new government subsidies or loan programs to people who buy houses -- this seems like an obvious way to prop up the housing market to me, and I don't see why more people aren't suggesting it. The Obama plan has a subsidy, but it's only $8000, which won't help much towards the price of a home, even with the current low prices.)


BTW, see what I mean about Geithner and Obama? Galbraith weighs all these emanations of Rubin in the balance and finds them wanting, but it depends on Obama, not them.

Yeah, I do now, actually -- ultimately, the leadership to make the necessary changes must come from Obama. But will it? I don't know. I think FDR make the correct economic moves not because he had a deep understanding of the economic problems and a mastery of economic theory, but because he had strong populist (bordering on socialist) feelings that just happened to lead to the right policies.

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