* Krugman … the actions of the Obama government saved us from the economic abyss; the Republicans are wrong, as was Ronald Reagan in a different era

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Paul Krugman writes in the NYT (8-10-09) …

• A few months ago the possibility of falling into the abyss seemed all too real.
• So what saved us from a full replay of the Great Depression? The answer, almost surely, lies in the very different role played by government.
• All in all, then, the government has played a crucial stabilizing role in this economic crisis.
• Ronald Reagan was wrong: sometimes the private sector is the problem, and government is the solution.
• And aren’t you glad that right now the government is being run by people who don’t hate government?
• Back in March, John Boehner, the House minority leader, declared that since families were suffering, “it’s time for government to tighten their belts and show the American people that we ‘get’ it.”
• Fortunately, Boehner’s advice was ignored.

Read the entire column at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/opinion/10krugman.html

LMW COMMENT (posted as a comment on NYT site) …

Good for you, Paul. You are a big enough man to admit that, despite disagreements in some of the details, the Obama stimulus package was and is exactly the right thing to do. You are also to be commended for correctly identifying the ignorance of the Republican proposals. Republicans are so bereft of productive ideas that their best shot is to call for anti-democratic thuggery as the way to deal with complicated healthcare issues. Palin calls Obama’s healthcare proposal “evil,” another indication that she is truly more stupid than George Bush, a very high bar indeed.

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* What does a novel have to do with the real anthrax case?

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* it’s time for the Obama administration to demonstrate its management skills

 Michael Hirsh writes in Newsweek (4/10/09) …

• Not long ago (March 23), a group of skeptical Democratic senators met at the White House with President Obama, his chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
• The six senators said the financial reform policies the president was pursuing were not going far enough, and the people Obama was choosing as his regulators were not going to change things fundamentally enough.
• While it clearly wants to install serious supervision, the Obama administration—along with other key authorities like the New York Fed—appears willing to stand back while Wall Street resurrects much of the ultracomplex global trading system that helped lead to the worst financial collapse since the Depression.
• A newly assertive Wall Street emerged recently; its goal: to stand against heavy regulation of “over-the-counter” derivatives … even as we are still picking up the debris, we seem to be ready to embrace that world once again.

LMW COMMENT … As hard as it is to deal with big issues in the glare of public crisis, the real test of President Obama’s governance will come in the relative quiet of sustained deliberation and management. Will Obama shine here as he has in the limelight? Will his management skills prove the equal of his obvious political skills? Management is harder and less dramatic than politics, but in the long run it is far more important. American voters have rarely valued management skills, at any level of government. Maybe it’s time we did.

 

Read the entire article at … http://www.newsweek.com/id/193360

 

* let’s help President Obama invest in America’s future; the alternative is truly frightening

Sharon Begley writes in Newsweek (3-23-09) …

• Even if we scale up existing technologies to mind-bending levels, such as finishing one nuclear plant every other day for the next 40 years, we’ll still fall short of how much low-carbon energy will be needed to keep atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide below what scientists now recognize as the point of no return.
• Hence the need for Nobel-caliber discoveries.
• Yet despite the pressing need, DOE spent a pitiful $2 billion to $3 billion on nondefense, basic energy R&D last year, less than one fifth what we spent in the 1970s and 1980s. A new report from the Brookings Institution calls for $20 billion to $30 billion a year and—to improve the odds of success—revamping the nation’s energy labs, which today are “too far removed from the marketplace to produce the kind of transformational research we need for new energy technologies,” says Brookings’s Mark Muro.
• The clock is ticking.

LMW COMMENT …

Similar articles could be (and have been) written about our thus far pathetic efforts to control healthcare costs and educate our population, the other two prongs of President Obama’s plans for investing in America’s future.

Obama’s talk last night emphasized that the alternative of not investing in our future is a sure path to the continued decline of America’s standard of living, our ability to lead the world, and although the president did not go this far, to our very existence as a force of civilization (think Egypt! Think Rome! Think the British empire!).

How different is Obama’s perspective from the ideological Republicans and some conservative Democrats who oppose him, from the Wall Street and other corporate folks whose primary motivation is the blatant greed to take what they can from this year’s profits, however transient and destabilizing such actions may be.

How fortunate for America that we elected a president with vision, patient and persistence. Now our job is to support him, not mindlessly in every detail, but enthusiastically in terms of his overall perspective and direction.

The leadership we need is now in the White House. Let’s do everything we can, in each Congressional district, to get the Obama budget passed, and to avoid the politics-as-usual, small-minded distortions that Congress so often epitomizes.

This is our moment. This is our chance to restore the American dream. We cannot afford to blow this opportunity. Here’s what you can do (and it will make a difference) … 

CALL or EMAIL your Representative and Senators and tell them you want them to support President Obama’s budget.

 

Read the entire Begley column at … http://www.newsweek.com/id/189293

* Obama … doing the best that can be done to play a very bad hand; we need patience not destructive criticism

Joe Nocera writes in the NYT (3-21-09)

• Can we all just calm down a little?

• Yes, the $165 million in bonuses handed out to executives in the financial products division of AIG was infuriating.

• But how does outing these executives fix skewed compensation incentives, which have created that unjustified sense of entitlement that pervades Wall Street?

• I’m worried that the political response is making the crisis worse. The Obama administration appears to have lost its grip on Congress, while the Treasury Department always seems caught off guard by bad news.

• it is in the taxpayers’ best interest to position A.I.G. as a company with many profitable units, worth potentially billions, and one bad unit that needs to be unwound. Which, by the way, is the truth.

• What the country really needs right now from Congress is facts instead of rhetoric.

LMW COMMENT …

Nocera’s article shows uncommon good sense. But I fear he is spitting in the wind.

Congress, elected every two years in 435 districts, is structurally incapable of acting professionally and responsibly, in the manner Nocera (and I) would prefer. Our form of government specifically prohibits the Obama administration, or any administration, from “controlling” Congress.

The individual greed and lack of responsible financial behavior on the part of many Americans is as much to blame as similar qualities on Wall Street and AIG, because it is all part and parcel of the same thing.

We have collectively lived beyond our means for many years and now we must pay the price.

President Obama is, as some are starting to say, and even his fervent supporters (like me) have always known, inexperienced. He has not run companies and he has not run government. But so what? Have those who did run our financial companies and did run our federal, state and local governments show any particular skills that should now be emulated? Does anyone think the McCain/Palin/right wing ideologues would be doing any better?

Obama was handed an incredible mess by the Bush administration. His power to get things straightened out is constrained, by Congress and many other factors over which he nor anyone else will never have control.

However, the most intelligent politician any of us has ever seen is patiently working his way through the issues, with imperfect but still discernible results. I think he is by far the best bet we have of getting to a better if still imperfect place.

Obama is a great threat to the “politics as usual” crowd on both sides of the aisle, which is why the opposition is so fierce. In my view, the political opposition and the 24 hour news media are a counter-productive disgrace, committed as they are to petty argument and destruction. They should be ignored to the greatest extent possible.

We should instead, as responsible citizens, try to consider rationally and generally support the steps Obama is taking, both to solve the financial mess he inherited from those who are now so critical, and to move this country forward toward energy independence, healthcare reform and educational excellence, all of which are essential to our future success as a nation and as a leader of the world. 

                                         

Read Nocera’s entire article at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/business/21nocera.html?_r=1&hp

 

* Obama ignores his critics; good

Eugene Robinson writes in the Washington Post (3/13/09)

• Critics of the Obama administration counsel the president and his aides to spend every waking hour on the paralyzing financial crisis.

• What these critics really want, though, is to delay or derail the progressive reforms that voters elected President Obama to carry out.

• Fortunately, Obama seems to be ignoring all the chatter. It’s about honoring a clear mandate.

• Obama’s political opponents have a subtler motive: to occupy, exhaust and impoverish the administration, making its promised domestic initiatives impossible.

• I would argue that a laser-like focus on the financial crisis, to the exclusion of everything else, is unlikely to improve the situation and may actually make things worse.

• I don’t fault the White House or the Treasury for a lack of haste. If there were an obvious, guaranteed solution, we’d know it by now. Unfortunately, there isn’t.

LMW COMMENT … Sometimes I worry that I am supporting President Obama too consistently, that perhaps his critics have a point. Then I think real hard about what the critics are saying, and why, and my support for Obama remains undiminished. He is the clearest thinker on the political scene, struggling to fix Bush’s multiple messes while implementing the policy mandates he made an integral part of his campaign. He deserves all the support he needs, and a plague on the greedy ideologues who want him (and us) to fail.

Read the entire article at … http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/honor_the_mandate_not_the_fix.html

 

* Republicans, following Limbaugh, refuse to be responsible

David Brooks writes in today’s NYT (3-10-09)

• The Democratic response to the economic crisis has its problems, but let’s face it, the current Republican response is totally misguided.

• after a decade of profligacy, the Republicans have decided to demand a rigid fiscal straitjacket at the one moment in the past 70 years when it is completely inappropriate.

• The G.O.P. leaders have adopted a posture that allows the Democrats to make all the proposals while all the Republicans can say is “no.”

• If the Republicans wanted to do the country some good, they’d embrace an entirely different approach.

  • First, they’d take the current economic crisis more seriously than the Democrats.

  • Second, Republicans could admit that they don’t know what the future holds, and they’re not going to try to make long-range plans based on assumptions that will be obsolete by summer.

  • Third, Republicans could offer the public a realistic appraisal of the health of capitalism.

  • Fourth, Republicans could get out in front of this crisis for once.

  • Finally, Republicans could make it clear that that the emergency has to be followed by an era of balance.

LMW COMMENT … Brooks offers intelligent suggestions, which could form the basis for intelligent debate, and could become part of the Obama program. But, and it’s a huge but, Republicans would rather be ideological than pragmatic, would rather attack Obama than contribute to real solutions, would rather listen to Rush Limbaugh than David Brooks. Meanwhile, Obama sails on, implementing the transformational programs he promised.

Read the entire column at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/opinion/10brooks.html?ref=opinion

* the one man who most needs to be patient — our president — will be

Bob Herbert writes in today’s NYT (3/7/09) …

• Barack Obama has only been president for six weeks, but there is a surprising amount of ire, anger, even outrage that he hasn’t yet solved the problems of the U.S. economy, that he hasn’t saved us from the increasingly tragic devastation wrought by the clownish ideas of right-wing conservatives and the many long years of radical Republican misrule.

• conservatives are busy trying to blame this epic economic catastrophe — a conflagration of their own making — on the new president. The right-wingers would have you believe this is Obama’s downturn.

• I don’t know whether President Obama’s ultimate rescue plan for the financial industry will work. 

• What I know is that the renegade clowns who ruined this economy, the Republican right in alliance with big business and a fair number of feckless Democrats — all working in opposition to the interests of working families — have no credible basis for waging war against serious efforts to get us out of their mess.

• Maybe the nuns in grammar school were right when they counseled that patience is a virtue. The man has been president for six weeks.

LMW COMMENT … from all we know, we can take comfort that the one man who most needs to be patient — our president — will be, even as he moves forward on a breathtaking agaenda of initiatives to transform this country, exactly as he said he would. Republicans, you lost, we rejected your nonsense, and we are also, as the latest polls clearly show, rejecting your ‘just say no’ approach. You have been reduced to abject name-calling – falsely labelling Obama a socialist or a communist – which accomplishes nothing but show your own true and uninformed colors.

Read Bob Herbert’s entire column at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/opinion/07herbert.html?ref=opinion

 

* Joe Scarborough is the one who doesn’t get it! The public knows who created this economic mess, and who has the best chance of fixing it.

First Read: The day in politics by NBC News for NBC News reports (3-4-09)

• To paraphrase Dickens, the last six weeks have been the best of times for Obama and the Democrats, and the worst of times for the Republicans. Just consider the latest findings from our NBC/WSJ poll:

• Obama’s favorability rating is at 68% (an all-time high in our survey), 67% say they feel more hopeful about his leadership, 60% approve of his job in the White House, and 49% have a positive view of the Democratic Party (which is also near a high).

• On the other hand, just 26% view the GOP positively (an all-time low in the poll), respondents blame Bush and congressional Republicans for most the partisanship in DC, 56% think the GOP’s opposition to Obama is based on politics, and Republicans lose by nearly 30 percentage points on the question about which party would do a better job of leading the country out of recession.

• The public doesn’t blame Obama for the economy; 84% say Obama inherited this economy, and two-thirds of those people think he has at least a year before he’s responsible for it.

LMW COMMENT … As we listen to commentators like Joe Scarborough (Morning Joe on MSNBC)  and a whole range of “just say no” Republicans screaming that Obama doesn’t get it and that his program of change is bad for America, it is good to know that the people who elected Obama remember why they did so. On with the change we need.

Read the entire post at … http://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/11fd1de2b592e89d

 

* Ronald Reagan, Republicans and greedy bankers

Paul Krugman writes in today’s NYT (3/2/09) …

• How did this global debt crisis happen?
• In the mid-1990s, the emerging economies of Asia had been major importers of capital, borrowing abroad to finance their development.
• But after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 (which seemed like a big deal at the time but looks trivial compared with what’s happening now), these countries began protecting themselves by amassing huge war chests of foreign assets, in effect exporting capital to the rest of the world.
• The result was a world awash in cheap money, looking for somewhere to go.
• Most of that money went to the United States … (where) American bankers, empowered by a quarter-century of deregulatory zeal, led the world in finding sophisticated ways to enrich themselves by hiding risk and fooling investors.
• For a while, the inrush of capital created the illusion of wealth; But bubbles always burst sooner or later; and the saving glut is still out there.
• around the world, desired saving exceeds the amount businesses are willing to invest. And the result is a global slump that leaves everyone worse off.
• So that’s how we got into this mess. And we’re still looking for the way out.

LMW COMMENT … At the heart of what went wrong (according to Krugman, and I agree) was a lack of regulation of greedy bankers and greedy bank clients. The unrestricted capitalism and diminished government regulation of Ronald Reagan and his associates in the conservative Republican movement can claim all the credit for the mess we’re in. Would that they had any clue how to get out of it, or even the good sense to follow Barack Obama’s lead.

 

Read Krugman’s entire column at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/opinion/02krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

 

* moving toward a more equitable distribution of income

Robert Reich (former U.S. Secretary of Labor) writes in The American Prospect (2/26/09) …

• President Obama’s new budget represents the biggest redistribution of income from the wealthy to the middle class and poor this nation has seen in more than forty years.
  • By allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, the marginal income tax on the highest earners goes back to 39.6 % (from 35 % now), and capital gains rates to 20 % (from 15 % now).
• It’s about time a presidential budget unequivocally redistributed income from the very rich to the middle class and poor.
  • The incomes of the top one percent have soared for 30 years while median wages have slowed or declined in real terms.
    • in the 1970s, the top-earning 1% of Americans took home 8% of total income 
      
    • as recently as 1980, they took home 9%.
      
    • By 2007, the top 1% took home over 22% of total income.
  • Meanwhile, even as their incomes dramatically increased, the total federal tax rates paid by the top one percent dropped. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top one percent paid a total federal tax rate of 37 percent three decades ago; now it’s paying 31 percent.

LMW COMMENT …

The excessive concentration of wealth among the most wealthy is the result of conscious Republican policies since the days of Ronald Reagan (even during the Clinton years, the Republicans controlled Congress for 6 of the 8 years).

These policies were fostered by the rich and those politicians they influenced, with the consent of many less well-off Americans who did not benefit, but who were attracted by the devious conservative social agenda of abortion, guns and gays. In other words, those who voted Republican against their own interests were fooled.

With the resounding election of Barack Obama, it’s clearly time for change. 

The greedy grab of the wealthy for ‘more, more, more’ is not only unfair and reprehensible in a democracy, it is also self-destructive. If the people who buy things have declining discretionary income, who will buy the products and services that create wealth in the first place?

There is nothing wrong with success bringing wealth; in fact there is much that is right in terms of incentives to creativity and the unleashing of productive energy. (This does not include, in my view, the obscene wealth related to our national casino otherwise known as Wall Street speculation, which has brought such chaos in its wake.)

Perhaps, however, we should begin to discuss how much individual wealth is appropriate.

• Are there any limits? 
  • Should a CEO earn 10 times what the average worker does? 20? 50? 600? 
• What would happen to our corporations if executive incomes  (including bonuses) were limited? 
  • Perhaps more funds would stay in the corporation to invest in new product development and to serve as a buffer against inevitable downturns.
• Should we reign in the useless and dangerous speculation in financial instruments which nobody even understands? 
  • I think everyone (except totally tone deaf Republicans) now agrees that the de-regulation policies (so trumpeted by John McCain before he got the memo) have produced catatstophic results.

These are complicated questions, the consequences of which must be carefully considered. But in a democracy, these are exactly the questions which should be asked and robustly debated.

 

Read the entire column at … http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=02&year=2009&base_name=finally_a_progressive_budget