Posted on 07/03/2009 4:58:49 PM PDT by FromLori
Paul Krugman says that the jobs report confirms that we're plunging right back toward another Great Depression.
We've lost 6.5 million jobs since the peak. After adjusting for population growth, we're down 8.5 million. As Richard Bernstein noted yesterday, wages and the workweek are also declining.
Obama's stimulus, meanwhile, promises to create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year (if you believe the projections). So, by then, assuming no further loss in jobs (please), we'll be about 5 million below where we should be. And state and city budget pressures are wiping out many of the benefits of the federal stimulus. So we're setting ourselves up for another lost decade.
Krugman's answer, not surprisingly, is more stimulus now:
All of this is depressingly familiar to anyone who has studied economic policy in the 1930s. Once again a Democratic president has pushed through job-creation policies that will mitigate the slump but aren’t aggressive enough to produce a full recovery. Once again much of the stimulus at the federal level is being undone by budget retrenchment at the state and local level.
So have we failed to learn from history, and are we, therefore, doomed to repeat it? Not necessarily — but it’s up to the president and his economic team to ensure that things are different this time. President Obama and his officials need to ramp up their efforts, starting with a plan to make the stimulus bigger.
Just to be clear, I’m well aware of how difficult it will be to get such a plan enacted...
Read the whole thing >
In case you think the "back to the 1930s" rhetoric is scare-mongering, take a look through these charts:
Tracking The Second Great Depression >
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
We’re headed back to the 1930’s PRECISELY because Obama is following the course that guys like Krugman have been recommending.
Because he doesn’t dare tell the emperor that he has no clothes.
I know the left likes to blame Bush for the “inherited” recession. I wish they would also tell us what exactly Bush did that caused the recession.
Agree and did you see that More Stimulus Now baloney
The “stimulus” is to steal money by dumping debt on tax paying Americans and giving money to Obama’s cronies.
Krugman was a board member and consultant to Enron - what a fraud.
Q: Right how do you turn a recession into a depression?
A: Elect Dims to the Presidency and Congress.
Hey Krugman the only stimulus jobs need is to restore the private business jobs that were exported by bi-partisan fleece trade.
In large part this is due to policies that Krugman championed.
Yes see other posts
The gov’t can give me a couple of acres and a mule. I’ll move my trailer on it. Plant a few watermelon trees and corn vines. Grow some fried chicken.
parsy, who is looking forward to the 30’s
Is Barry already growing a little paint brush moustache?
There is no way he will create any jobs. Look for 15-20% unemployment.
Pray for America
Now, now. We’ll be so much better off when everything is made somewhere else, and we just have to sit back and buy stuff. Of course, with no jobs, that might be a little difficult.
The economic turndown correlates most exactly to the Democrats taking power of Congress and making it impossible for the Bush Administration to do anything thereafter. The Dems did nothing to run the country but spent all their time trying to destroy the Bush administration. We are now reaping the rewards of their first two years of malfeasance.
Everytime the democrats talk economy it is social programs. That doesn’t stimulate growth, it creates a burden in later years. Higher taxes, and lower standards of living are all the results of what they have implemented. We would have been better off long term, without the first stimulus package now they want a second. Have they not learned this lesson yet, government does not create weatlh?
>> Krugman’s answer, not surprisingly, is more stimulus now
Yeah. I’m sure it is. Won’t work.
Bambi and his idiots can’t spend the “stimulus” they have already authorized fast enough! In spite of those dire hand-wringing warnings dating back to last year about how we need stimulus NOW. (Thanks W! Thanks Hank! Thanks Juan McStain! Thanks John Cornyn!)
What’s more — and this is key — he’s getting blowback about the inevitable inflation that will result if he doesn’t offer a plausible solution for PAYING for it. And, inexperienced dweeb that Bambi is, and foolish tax cheat lieutenants that he appoints, he has NO idea how to do that!
Tax revenues won’t do it! They are DROPPING.
Boy President is between a rock and a hard place.
Obama is not helping. When “employee” Americans finally realize that Obama’s policies took credit and banking crisis and turned into a Depression they’ll probably want to impeach him and his Congress...
But I don’t hold out much hope for enough to realize the truth. The MSM has finally figured out how to use Internet technologies in conjunction with their Liberal political counterparts to overwhelm the Right’s ability to tell the nation how this crisis came about and what Bush tried to do to stop the crisis from occurring, and how Obama has taken the crisis and used to pass policies that will only deepen the crisis.
People want to feel good again and Obama makes them feel good. The fact that Clinton’s lending policies and Obama’s domestic and foreign policies are what’s causing them to feel bad doesn’t seem to phase them. They are emotionally invested in Obama’s hype.
What happens when “employee” voters are outnumbered by “entitlement” voters? Everything this administration does is aimed at making sure they stay in power. More entitlements.. more democrats. I know that the math just doesn’t work, but the masses have been bought and paid for already.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.