Thanks for Rachel Maddow, NYT columnists not so much

[ProSense]

Thanks Rachel.

That Sinking Feeling

By BOB HERBERT

Barack Obama seems to think he’s done a pretty terrific job as president, but maybe he hasn’t trumpeted his accomplishments effectively enough.

He told The Times’s Peter Baker, in an interview for the Sunday magazine, “Given how much stuff was coming at us, we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration — and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top — that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular.”

This assessment by the president is debatable, but it won’t be among the things that are front and center in the minds of voters as the November elections approach. The problem for Mr. Obama and the Democrats is the widespread sense among anxiety-riddled Americans that the country is still in very bad shape and headed in the wrong direction.

A Gallup poll last week found that 62 percent feel that economic conditions are deteriorating.

The president and his party may have racked up one legislative victory after another — on the bank bailouts, the stimulus package, the health care bill, and so forth — but ordinary Americans do not feel as if their lives or their prospects are improving. And they don’t think it’s a public relations problem.

Nearly 15 million are jobless and many who are working are worried that they (or a close relative) will soon become unemployed. The once solid foundation of home ownership has grown increasingly wobbly, with the number of foreclosures this year expected to surpass a million. And the country is still at war.

more

Herbert is referring to this NYT interview with President Obama

Must agree with the second comment to Herbert's piece:

I think that the dissatisfaction in the country is attributable to the fact that many constituencies believe that their needs were not addressed by the administration. The Health Care Bill deprived quite a few seniors of Medicare Advantage which was an unfair subsidy for the insurance companies. It had to go. Also, many young people who are just scraping by with part time jobs will be forced to buy health care insurance severely limiting their disposable income. But the dissatisfaction goes deeper. Young people are having a difficult time starting out. Jobs are scarce, and they feel that even if they get a job they will be forced to support the increasing social programs of the older generation. They need answers now. Unfortunately, their future was lost by the very people they are about to elect. I cannot press a button and create a full-employment economy, and neither can Barack Obama. It is going to take time and the commitment of well-meaning Congressman who want to work together to solve our problems. Electing extremists will only delay the process and make the situation worse.

Then there is Krugman, who wrote this yesterday: Epitaph For An Administration

Epitaph? Good grief.

Krugman wrote this a couple of days ago: The Boehnerization of Barack Obama

Why has stimulus become a dirty word? Many reasons, I guess: an inadequate plan combined with a wildly overoptimistic forecast was more or less guaranteed to create the impression of a failed program. But it’s also true that the president himself has had a deeply self-destructive tendency to echo his opponents’ arguments. My original invisible bond vigilantes post was inspired, in part, by Obama’s decision to go on Fox News and declare that we needed to cut the deficit to avoid a double dip. Then, in July, he repeated almost verbatim John Boehner’s justly mocked claim that since the private sector is tightening its belt, the government should do the same.

It's not the President's fault stimulus is a dirty word. Krugman in his persistent "I was right" attempts (often vaguely acknowledging that it was not possible to pass a larger package) has done everything to create the impression that the stimulus didn't work. But despite his drama, he's not consistent.

This is what Krugman wrote last November:

The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, is working just about the way textbook macroeconomics said it would. But that’s also the bad news — because the same textbook analysis says that the stimulus was far too small given the scale of our economic problems. Unless something changes drastically, we’re looking at many years of high unemployment.

<...>

So the government needs to do much more. Unfortunately, the political prospects for further action aren’t good.

What I keep hearing from Washington is one of two arguments: either (1) the stimulus has failed, unemployment is still rising, so we shouldn’t do any more, or (2) the stimulus has succeeded, G.D.P. is growing, so we don’t need to do any more. The truth, which is that the stimulus was too little of a good thing — that it helped, but it wasn’t big enough — seems to be too complicated for an era of sound-bite politics.

<...>

O.K., I know I’m being impractical: major economic programs can’t pass Congress without the support of relatively conservative Democrats, and these Democrats have been telling reporters that they have lost their appetite for stimulus.

Unfortunately instead of more pieces like that and even ones pointing to the need for more stimulus, Krugman spends a lot of time in declaring he was right and blaming the administration for the stimulus and other failures of Congress. He said it: "I know I’m being impractical," and he is right.

Also, when it comes to stimulus, Republicans, not conservative Democrats, have been the problem, and Krugman knows that. Every Democrat voted for the stimulus, the state aid bill and nearly all the other aid bills passed.

Krugman's problem is that in calling for more stimulus, with the knowledge that this is a politically difficult environment, continually focuses on his blame the administration claims even as it tries to get more stimulus.

Here was his reation to the infrastructure stimulus, which was double the amount allocated to bridge/road projects in the original stimulus.

The fact is that the administration is getting as much as it can get. The stimulus was only a start and there have been several stimulus bills passed since the ARRA.

Fortunately, more people likely saw Keith Olbermann's piece on the stimulus than will read this column.

Credit to Democrats despite Republican hypocrisy


In August, Krugman wrote another I was right post, but this time combined it with proof the stimulus worked:

One point I haven’t seen made about the troubles of the US economy is that the timing of recent growth tells you a lot about what was — and what wasn’t — wrong with economic policy.

<...>

And how did things actually turn out? Like this:

<...>

It’s not a perfect correspondence, nor would you expect one — other factors, especially inventory swings, were bound to make the timing of actual growth different from that of stimulus. Still, the two pictures support the view that stimulus worked as long as it lasted, boosting the economy — which is the same conclusion Adam Posen drew from Japan’s experience in the 1990s (pdf): Fiscal policy works when it is tried.

But the stimulus wasn’t nearly big enough to restore full employment — as I warned from the beginning. And it was set up to fade out in the second half of 2010.

<...>

Yes Paul, you were right, but that doesn't change the facts, which you sometimes acknowledge, that: a) a larger stimulus could not have passed and b) the stimulus that passed worked.

[ProSense]

1. No comment? n/t

[histeria]

2. Krugman supported Obama's health reform bill, the bailout and the stimulus

Might seem unbelievable to those who pretend Krugman hates Obama with passion, but Krugman did push for those bills to be passed.

[ProSense]

6. Yes, he did

Krugman: "this is a major program to aid lower- and lower-middle-income families"

Healthcare: victory for America's soul

"Might seem unbelievable to those who pretend Krugman hates Obama with passion, but Krugman did push for those bills to be passed."

Who said Krugman hates Obama?

The problem is that he blames Obama for things that even he himself acknowledges were the result of Congressional politics.

[OHdem10]

3. From DAY ONE, the Dems on the Hill and the President permitted

the Republicans to DEFINE EVERTHING including their own actions.

Go back to the very beginning the Conventional Wisdom became--
Nancy Pelosi and Democrats just took the stimulus and rewarded
every interest group of theirs. The stories on TV made it sound
as if they were taking this big pile of money and divying it up
into marvelous king sized earmarks. Republicans are not shy
they demand to get on every TV program going and spread the
interpretation. There was no push back from the WH or the Hill.
For whatever reason Democrats did not show up on TV to destroy
the Republican theme. It stood.

No one came on Television and explained step by step exactly
where the money was going and how this helped the country and
how this fitted into an overall plan to get us out of the ditch.

The President did say one sentence. We are saving Policemen
firefighters and teacher's jobs. No real explanation.

Getting on TV and selling an idea is almost more important than
the idea itself. If you do not place your own definition, the
GOP and Media are not going to help.


Yesterday Matthew Dowd once again stated words of wisdom. He
has been ignored by Democrats all these years. They should
listen.

Paraphrasing but close to direct quote:

Both political parties make a serious mistake. The Republicans
do not believe the Media is their friend, and they are Wrong.
The Democrats believe the Media is their friend and they are
wrong.

I hope the Democrats listen this time and start getting their
own message out. Stop leaking all the sausage making and
criticizing members of your own party. Just makes Media
lose more respect for you. The Media espcially TV Media is
not your friend.

[ProSense]

4. Don't agree

"Republicans to DEFINE EVERTHING including their own actions"

The stimulus was not defined by Republicans. Their obstructionism was facilitated by the fact that their votes were needed.

Yesterday Matthew Dowd once again stated words of wisdom. He
has been ignored by Democrats all these years. They should
listen.

Paraphrasing but close to direct quote:

Both political parties make a serious mistake. The Republicans
do not believe the Media is their friend, and they are Wrong.
The Democrats believe the Media is their friend and they are
wrong.

Matthew Dowd, who help Bush get re-elected? The Democrats believe the media is their friend? What planet does Dowd live on?

You can go to any number of left leaning boards and find Democratic officials and influential Democrats bypassing the media to get their message out, that has been the case for several years now, at least since 2004.

[flpoljunkie]

5. Recent Rolling Stone article points out total stimulus may well end up over $1 trillion

1. Averting a Depression

Any discussion of Barack Obama's performance as president starts — and frequently ends — with one number: 9.6 percent. That brutal, stagnant unemployment figure cries out "failure."

But contemplate for a moment the abyss that Obama's leadership steered us away from — where we would be today if laissez-faire Republican radicals had succeeded in allowing the economic collapse to take its course. According to a study by economists from Princeton and Moody's, more than 16 million jobs would have been lost without the interventions of TARP, the Recovery Act and the Federal Reserve — double the damage actually suffered. Unemployment would have spiked to 16.5 percent, and next year's federal deficit would have more than doubled, to $2.6 trillion. "With outright deflation in prices and wages," the study concludes, "this dark scenario constitutes a 1930s-like depression."

Obama played a pivotal role in the economic interventions that staved off disaster. He renominated Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve, backing the central bank's use of record-low interest rates to prop up the banking system. He demanded unprecedented transparency of both the Fed and Wall Street in administering "stress tests" that restored the confidence of panicked investors, allowing "zombie banks" to return to the living without resorting to nationalization. Thanks to such stewardship, the Treasury now estimates, the price tag for the TARP bailout has dropped from $700 billion (the equivalent of the Pentagon's annual budget) to $29 billion (about one-fourth the spending on veterans). Above all, the president drove the passage of the Recovery Act, which the Princeton-Moody's study concludes has created nearly 2.7 million jobs.

"The stimulus did what it was supposed to do," says Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody's and a former adviser to John McCain. "It ended the Great Recession and it jump-started a recovery."

Republican critics have blasted the Recovery Act as a failure because it did not hold unemployment below eight percent, as the president's economic advisers had promised. And liberal economists accused Obama of failing to fight hard enough to enact a bigger stimulus that would have saved more jobs. But since the original stimulus squeaked through, the president has won a series of stand-alone measures — including three extensions of unemployment benefits, the Cash for Clunkers program, a second round of aid for states and a package of loans and tax cuts for small businesses — that have infused another $170 billion into the economy. The Recovery Act itself, meanwhile, has grown from $787 billion to $814 billion, thanks to provisions that were smartly pegged to metrics like unemployment.

In fact, should Obama secure passage of two new programs he has proposed — $50 billion in infrastructure spending and $200 billion in tax breaks for investments in new equipment — he will have surpassed the $1 trillion stimulus that many liberal economists believed from the beginning was necessary. "As the need became more obvious to people, we were able to take additional steps to accelerate progress," Obama senior adviser David Axelrod tells Rolling Stone. The president, in effect, has achieved through patience and pragmatism what he was unlikely to have won through open political warfare.

Read entire article here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/220013

[JamesA1102]

7. K&R! nt

[ProSense]

8. Thanks. n/t

[Uzybone]

9. One day Herbert will write a column with new ideas and solutions

he actually thinks that the people wanting change are clamoring for the poor? WTF is he talking about.

And then he goes on to conflate the bailouts with the stimulus. I hope he knows the bailouts were passed in 2008, before this administration took office.

[ProSense]

11. Frankly,

I don't get the need to try to blame the economic failures, which are the result of decades of bullshit policies, on the administration.

It all collapses and the President is supposed to fix it before anyone even understands the full implications of the crisis.

Siglitz

Given the complexity of the economic system, the difficulties in predicting how expectations will be altered, and the pervasive irrationalities in the market, there is no way the impact of any economic policy could be ascertained with certainty. There may be some circumstances in which the effect of monetary policy can be accurately gauged. But recessions of this depth come only once every 75 years. What is true in normal times may be of little relevance now, especially as central banks engage in unusual measures such as QE.

A lot of people are proposing economic solutions tried over the past 30 years (Reagan thru Bush 2) as viable for the Obama administration, which is dealing with an economic crisis of historic proportions. A lot of these economists, including Stiglitz, were around, at least during the Clinton years, and in recent time should have been making a lot more noise. Some warned, but if the media, corporations and country didn't take them seriously, why are they surprised that the media and corporations are pushing back hard against the administration?

The mortgage crisis is a relatively new phenomenon and the solution is not going to be a quick or easy fix.

The greedy corporate assholes have no intention of cooperating unless they get their way.

[JTFrog]

10. K&R!