So here’s the picture that scares me: It’s September 2009, the unemployment rate has passed 9 percent, and despite the early round of stimulus spending it’s still headed up. Mr. Obama finally concedes that a bigger stimulus is needed.
But he can’t get his new plan through Congress because approval for his economic policies has plummeted, partly because his policies are seen to have failed, partly because job-creation policies are conflated in the public mind with deeply unpopular bank bailouts. And as a result, the recession rages on, unchecked.
This isn't why he won't be able to get it through. The problem is the public will say, "We just spent a trillion on so-called "stimulus" and now we're only deeper in debt and in a deeper hole. What's the problem? Does stimulus work at all?"
The answer, of course, is that there is no evidence that massive spending such as this will stop a Depression. It doesn't matter how many times you blame it on the previous administration, either.
Socialists are experts at seeing causation where merely correlation exists (as in the way the Depression ended after WWII spending began, therefore, spending ends depressions).
There is considerable evidence that New Deal program PROLONGED the Great Depression yet Obama is headed down the same path -- big programs that hinder, not help, in getting people back to work. I fear we're destined to live through 10 or more years of a destitute economy, largely because of what has happened in the past few weeks.
And this idiot, Krugman, wants to do more of it? |
