Results tagged “stimulus” from Argento's Front Stoop

Throughout our economic crisis, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been nailing it. His analysis and predictions have been spot-on, but his dismal view of how this crisis will play out has turned off a lot of people.

Once again, this week, reviewing the minutes of the most recent meeting of Federal Reserve's open market committee, Krugman finds the news, something that others may have ignored.

He writes: "Most press reports focused either on the Fed's downgrade of the near-term outlook or on its adoption of a long-run 2 percent inflation target.

"But my eye was caught by the following chilling passage (yes, things are so bad that the summarized musings of central bankers can keep you up at night): 'All participants anticipated that unemployment would remain substantially above its longer-run sustainable rate at the end of 2011, even absent further economic shocks; a few indicated that more than five to six years would be needed for the economy to converge to a longer-run path characterized by sustainable rates of output growth and unemployment and by an appropriate rate of inflation.'"

Krugman says this economic slump is unlike others this nation has experienced and will cause a great deal of pain and suffering before it's all over. Economic stimulus plans and rescue plans for financially troubled homeowners may mitigate the slump, he writes, but we're in for a long, dark period.

Is there a silver lining? He says we may pull out of it eventually, but it's going to take longer than we think.

Read the whole thing here.

Often, our own U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., gets criticized for his moderate stances, irritating those on the left and the right with his willingness to try to get something done.

He has come out in favor of the stimulus bill, albeit a compromise bill hammered out by a small group of senate moderates.

He explains his position in a Washington Post op-ed piece here.

It begins: "I am supporting the economic stimulus package for one simple reason: The country cannot afford not to take action.

"The unemployment figures announced Friday, the latest earnings reports and the continuing crisis in banking make it clear that failure to act will leave the United States facing a far deeper crisis in three or six months. By then the cost of action will be much greater -- or it may be too late."

Arlen gets it. How come the right-wingers, whose fiscal policies of the past 28 years have led to this disaster, don't?

Still, Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman argues that the centrist approach doesn't go far enough to fill the hole we've dug ourselves. Krugman, who has been right in calling the shots in this economic disaster, says President Obama erred in trying to forge a bi-partisan coalition in favor of the stimulus bill and that his attempts to do so watered down the Senate version to the point of reducing its effectiveness.

Krugman writes: "So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren't good.

"For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. 'Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,' he declared on Saturday, and 'the scale and scope of this plan is right.'

"No, they didn't, and no, it isn't."

Read his piece here.

Republican opposition to the stimulus plan has reached the point of idiocy.

Don't take my word for it. Here is an excellent analysis by Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein.

Pearlstein writes: "Actually, what's striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient.

"What really irks so many Republicans, of course, is that all the stimulus money isn't being used to cut individual and business taxes, their cure-all for economic ailments, even though all the credible evidence is that tax cuts are only about half as stimulative as direct government spending."

He says Republicans need some remedial economic education, that their ignorance of basic facts, or their cynicism exploiting others' basic economic illiteracy, could make what is a financial crisis into a catastrophe.

Here's more from Daniel Gross, business columnist for Newsweek. He concludes that Republicans are taking their economic advice from Joe the Plumber.

As today's dismal job report emphasizes, we need action on the economy immediately. Holding it up can only bring more pain and when the hammer falls and working people in the country are losing their jobs, homes and pensions, they will remember who stood in the schoolhouse door.

Today's New York Times column by Nobel-prize-winning economist Paul Krugman lays out why we need this economic stimulus package in pretty strong language.

He writes: "It's time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation's future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge."

Read the whole thing here.