Thursday - September 02, 2010

DLTDHYOTWO

( the title is a nice big acronym for Peiper, who loves to figure such things out )

In a farewell speech, outgoing White House economic adviser Christina Romer touted the success of the stimulus package Wednesday and urged lawmakers not to shy away from more deficit spending to keep the momentum going.

The only “surefire” way to boost demand, she said, is to “spend more and tax less.”

That assessment, though, clashes with the claims of congressional Republicans who say dismal economic news of late underscores how ineffective the stimulus has been—and the need to change course.

You betcha: quadrupling the national debt in just 2 years is the way to go, even though we have nothing to show for it. So let’s do it again, only harder. Does the left ever have any new ideas? This is the same song and dance they’ve played a million times before. It don’t work. Not for the schools, not for an economic stimulus, not for nothing.

Coupled with a run of bad news out of the housing market, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday that construction activity dropped for the third month in a row.

August employment numbers due out Friday are not expected to show any drop in the jobless rate.

Romer acknowledged that the Recovery Act failed to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent, as she once predicted, but said the problem was that the recession got worse than anticipated before the stimulus had a chance to do its work.

“Given our long-run fiscal challenges, any additional support should be done in a responsible way. ... Most actions, however, should be paid for over time with future spending cuts or appropriate future revenues,” she said. “But concern about the deficit cannot be an excuse for leaving unemployed workers to suffer. We have tools that would bring unemployment down without worsening our long-run fiscal outlook, if we can only find the will and the wisdom to use them.”

She listed small business tax cuts and state fiscal relief as positive measures.

What what what? Cutting taxes is a good idea? Turn in your natural hemp sandals lefty. Them are Conservative concepts.

But let’s borrow more money now, and sell our great-grandchildren’s future down the river so we can pump up some more failing leftwing institutions. Don’t worry, President Obama has sworn that, now that we’re all broke and out of a job, he’s going to make employment his “central responsibility”. You know, when he’s not too busy playing golf, or campaigning behind the scenes at more than arm’s length for fellow Democrats ... since being seen in public with TOTUS is the kiss of death.

But for the rest of you peasants who don’t dig into the news, Newsweek has you covered. Don’t you know that Romer’s plan coulda shoulds mighta worked, if only it had cost double or triple, and if only that evil genius chimp moron Bush hadn’t screwed up the works?

Christina Romer, the chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, marked the end of her tenure Wednesday with a speech at the National Press Club in Washington. Romer, who is credited with leading the way on the stimulus package passed in February 2009, tried to explain her thinking then and why the stimulus didn’t work as well as she’d expected. With the economy still struggling to get back off the ground, Romer leaves the post with a bit of a cloud over her head. But is it deserved?

Wry
Romer’s bleak speech—and her seeming lack of any strong ideas for fixing the situation—were enough to ruin lunch for Washington Post wiseguy Dana Milbank. But put in perspective, what’s much worse than the loss of appetite is the 4 million jobs lost over the last 18 months.

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post:
That’s not Romer’s fault; the financial collapse occurred before she, and Obama, took office. But she was the president’s top economist during a time when the administration consistently underestimated the depth of the economy’s troubles—miscalculations that have caused Americans to lose faith in the president and the Democrats.

Defending
The issue was that the stimulus was too small, says columnist Joshua Green. But that’s not Romer’s fault: she said so from the start, but her ambitions were stifled by the political operators in the White House, and the result has actually been a worse political outcome than if they’d listened to her.

Joshua Green, The Boston Globe:
Her arguments for a larger stimulus went unheeded ... The White House insists that it could not have gotten a larger stimulus through Congress, a debatable claim. But by twice neglecting to try, it has staked its fortunes on a policy that has visibly fallen short on the issue of greatest concern, the economy.

Grateful
Say what you will about her policies, Jacob Goldstein of NPR says admiringly, her frankness about just how little she and her colleagues understand about the current recession was refreshing, if perhaps a bit unnerving.

Jacob Goldstein, NPR/Planet Money:
Christina Romer ... wasn’t shy about how much economists don’t understand about the nation’s economy. It’s always refreshing to hear experts admit uncertainty—even if it’s a way to explain earlier predictions that didn’t pan out.

Horry Clap. Hey, all you idiots, let’s all stand in a circle and play with guns. Surely, nothing could go wrong, right?

It’s not like the whole damn country hasn’t been telling this clown parade that they’re going in the wrong direction ...

So the wise academic had it all wrong the whole time. Who knew? Who would have guessed? [um, almost everybody with any connection to reality and an IQ higher than their shoe size?]

Here ya go ... this sums up the whole situation from beginning to end:

Romer is leaving the administration to return as an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

( Yes, it tells us everything, including the fact that the Fox News reporter has the writing skills of a 4 year old. )

Posted by Drew458     on 09/02/2010 at 02:45 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Economics •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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