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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (70744)	4/1/2009 10:29:26 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Take Out Your Red Pencils Jonah Goldberg The Corner Bob Shrum writes a fascinatingly honest column in which he says that Obama's "path to greatness" is to run up huge deficits. There's so much that seems wrong, but it's all written with such bluster and confidence, it's hard to figure out where to object first. Here's one spot. <<< One of the most stubborn [myths] is what Kennedy denounced at Yale—the notion that deficits are always evil and the balanced budget an inherent public good. This myth is now constantly exploited by do-nothing opponents of Obama’s recovery plan. On Sunday, George Stephanopoulos read a viewer’s complaint to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: “How do you justify printing money out of thin air?” Isn’t the inevitable consequence “hyperinflation?” Geithner calmly rebuked the cliché by pointing to the Federal Reserve’s capacity to counter inflation by raising interest rates once the economy is back on track. After all, cutting spending now would accelerate, not reverse, the downturn, and trigger a spiral of declining federal revenues that could leave budget balancing out of reach no matter how deeply we cut. This is elementary economics. However, Republicans, who are either blinded by ideology or cynically clear-sighted about the political dividends of a prolonged recession, robotically call for deficit reduction anyway.... >>> Forget the strawman characterization of Republicans at the end. Look at his deus Fed ex machina argument. Worried about inflation? You fool! The Federal Reserve will make it vanish with a mere abracadabra. Left out: The fact that wrenching inflation from the economy is not only hard, but very painful. Just ask Paul Volcker. Then there's this: <<< In 1933, FDR blew up a London economic summit that sought to set fixed currency exchange rates, a virtual return to the gold standard that would have hobbled his economic strategy. This time, the British government agrees with the American approach and actually led the way during Bush’s waning months. Obama also retains his commanding popularity across Europe. He will leave the G-20 summit with his economic policy whole and with some measure of consensus, at least on financial reform. He will then visit Prague, where I predict he will receive an overwhelmingly positive reception. It’s amusing to watch unilateralist Republicans invoke European opinion to shore up their opposition to an American President. But perceptive conservatives are also beginning to fret that Obama just might be succeeding. George Will has opined that economic recovery won’t be due to Obama’s policy – a preemptive myth in the making. >>> Now there is a serious debate about whether FDR's policy preferences were ultimately right when he — after enormous dickering — scuttled the London Economic Conference (though he himself abandoned those policies by 1934). But there's next to no debate over the fact that FDR's performance was reckless and irresponsible. He screwed our allies, undermined international consensus, emboldened Germany and Japan, and pandered to populist forces in the U.S. It's revealing that Shrum thinks this is a glorious model for Obama. Indeed, more to the point, Obama has already abandoned most of his agenda for the G-20 meeting because he knows the answer to pretty much everything is: No. Shrum wants to smack "unilateralist" Republicans for invoking European opinion. But Shrum leaves out the reason why critics are invoking European opinion. It's that Obama and his spinners insisted that The One would be able to get our allies to cooperate with us more. He can't. Why on earth can't "unilateralists" point that out? corner.nationalreview.com