The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Coulda,shoulda , woulda

    By Flavius on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 10:02pm |

     

    Ezra Klein thinks Obama could have handled the financial crisis better.

    He says so in many thousands of words

    If Romer, Summers et al had read their R& R (Reinhart and Rogoff),starved all other initiatives and rifle shot at a go-for- broke stimulus maybe unemployment would be 7% today instead of 9% (my words , not Klein's or RR's)

    And pigs could fly.

    Even if Obama had squeezed another 200 billion out of his fluctuating control of the Senate during the 4 or 5 months between the debuts of  Al Franken (60)  and Scott Brown's (back to 59). Klein doesn't explain how Obama could have squared the circle of the necessity of the bank's marking their real estate  to market and the impossibility of their doing and staying in business. 

    I'm back to the New Yorker cartoon  where the scientist points to a spot on  the blackboard full of equations and says

          here is where a miracle occurs 

     

    Anyway here's Ezra. No miracles

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/could-this-time-have-been-different/2011/08/25/gIQAiJo0VL_blog.html

     

    Comments

    Ezra Klein is the smartest ninth-grader in the world.


    by Richard the Ele... on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 11:08pm

    You may be right. But he's smarter than me , for sure, and than Tyler Cowen et al who waste ink  in the Business section of the Sunday Times.


    by Flavius on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 11:14pm

    At least he's not the smartest 7th grader. That hallowed position is occupied, for life, by Thomas L. Friedman.


    by Red Planet on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 11:51pm

    I started to read that article following a ling at Economists View.   But after a couple of pages I remembered why I only read about two Ezra Klein's columns per year.  He's a shameless and obsequious water-carrier for the administration, and never as far as I can tell has offered a single original idea on any topic.


    by Dan Kervick on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 12:41am

     I only read about two Ezra Klein's columns per year. 

    You have the advantage on me, I don't read any.

    This particular one seems fairly critical Maybe you should finish it and see whether Klein is still emulating Gunga Din.


    by Flavius on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 12:32pm

    Klein seems pretty supportive of the administration to me, Flavius. Difficult times, hard to read the tea leaves, worse than anyone thought, political roadblocks, did everything that was politically possible, who knew it could get worse, who knew it would be harder to come back to the congressional trough later for more, probably erred in raising expectations, would do the PR differently if had it to do over, etc. etc.

    Klein lays out a case that recovery after a financial crash is hard and has never been handled well, anywhere. Any criticism of the Obama administration is along these lines: "nobody can get this right, not even folks who try hard."

     


    by Red Planet on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 1:49pm

    The piece is only mildly critical.  It's mainly one long defense case for the administration, pleading political mercy on account of diabolically difficult political waters to navigate.

    But the focus of the piece is also too much on the banks and on the initial responses to the financial crisis in 2009.  Obama's really wrong turn happened in 2010, after a recovery was already beginning to take shape.  The administration started out on an activists path, but then they took a disastrously wrong rightward turn toward the pseudo-problem of the national debt behind the Bowles-Simpson commission and Pete Peterson, and wasted a year and a half in a neo-Hooverite mode following the Tea Party down the rabbit hole. They added their powerful voice to the debt hysterians and austerity-mongers. Now we have virtually the same level of unemployment and underemployment we had when they started, and the same falling and stagnating real incomes.

    Obama let all his most progressive economists and the real brains in the administration go, and instead of getting other ones, he turned the agenda of hope and change over to corporate pleasers and insiders like Daley and Immelt.   He totally blew it.


    by Dan Kervick on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 9:15pm

     

    Right. And all that money spent. And still no new bridges, no alternative energy sources, no respite in home foreclosures, no soldiers coming home from Afghanistan, no jobs coming back to America. While the party on Wall Street continues.


    by Red Planet on Mon, 10/10/2011 - 1:35am

    Acting as pressure relief valve, and to prevent pitchforks from going after the bankers Obama has accomplished much.

    He bought time. 

    There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.
    Napoleon Bonaparte

    Now we'll see if he can diffuse the anger again or he'll be replaced with someone who can make more promises the people will believe.

    A successful politician:  Promise everything; deliver nothing: 


    by Resistance on Mon, 10/10/2011 - 1:45am

     

    Here's Krugman's take on the Klein article:

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/was-failure-inevitable/

    Bottom line: Krugman reminds us that many folks understood back then it was worse than the White House thought, more needed to be done, and shifting to deficits was a shift in the wrong direction. But the White House didn't want to hear it. And...

    Now, Ezra may be right that none of this would have made much difference. But the White House was weak and confused in the face of a political and economic debacle, when it should have gone all out.

    And you know what? It should still go all out. The chances of success are lower than they would have been if it had taken a strong position two years ago, but it ain’t over until it’s over.


    by Red Planet on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 5:47pm

    I agree with Krugman's opening paragraph..

     


    by Flavius on Mon, 10/10/2011 - 12:29am

    Too little ...

    Too late ...

    Not enough cash put in the right places to start generating the cash flow necessary to kick start the economy.

    The GOPer's hell-bent on ruining the economy and killing off any job growth to make Obama a one-term wonder.

    And Obama and his Administration too busy trying to figure out how to come up with a bipartisan approach the GOPer's would sign on to.

    We're getting the government we deserve and the fallout that goes with it.

     


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 10/10/2011 - 7:50am