Obama Liquidates Himself by Paul Krugman

[Joanne98]

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)

It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.

And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”

Continued>>>
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/obama-liquidates-himself/

[midnight]

1. A pending freeze will make it even harder to get jobs back because government

is the last spender around.

Like Clinton's, Obama's package of middle class benefits is small potatoes. They're worthwhile but they pale relative to the size and scale of the challenge America's middle class is now facing. Obama can no longer afford to come up with lists of nice things to do. At the least, he's got to do two very big and important things: (1) Enact a second stimulus. It should mainly focus on bailing out state and local governments that are now cutting services and raising taxes, and squeezing the middle class. This would be the best way to reinvigorate the economy quickly. (2) Help distressed homeowners by allowing them to include their mortgage debt in personal bankruptcy -- which will give them far more bargaining leverage with morgage lenders. (Wall Street hates this.)

Yet instead of moving in this direction, Obama is moving in the opposite one. His three-year freeze on a large portion of discretionary spending will make it impossible for him to do much of anything for the middle class that's important. Chalk up another win for Wall Street, another loss for Main.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/obamas-tiny-jobs-ideas-fo_b_436757.html

[truedelphi]

4. I don't even see the small potatoes for the middle class that you mention.

Well maybe, some young upstarts that know bio tech now have rewarding careers due to the ban on stem cell research being lifted.

But over thirty states are now in decline. And bernanke/Geithner have absolutely no intention of Bailing them out - only their Wall Street buddies.

So whatever jobs the stimulus package has managed to create, the state deficits are trimming an equal number.

[GinaMaria]

2. Are we being punished for something?

it's starting to feel that way. WTF? We are collapsing rapidly. Rome is being sacked!

[katty]

3. OK kiddies there are NO jobs for you and a spending freeze, too!

but we will continue to throw $$$ at the Pentagon and of course, allow Wall Street Banksters to be free to package and steal even more faux $$$. O, and by the way Ben Bernanke only needs 50 votes-so get that done, STAT!

[GeorgeGist]

5. In other words, it's exactly what one would expect ...

from a COWARD.

[democracy1st]

6. Goldman Sachs admin!

[Vidar]

7. K&R.

[LongTomH]

8. We thought we were voiting for FDR - We got Herbert Hoover!!!!

Unless he changes course we're going to have: a) another Great Depression and/or 2) an American "Lost Decade."