Day: July 2, 2010

There is no intrinsic contradiction between providing additional fiscal stimulus today, while the unemployment rate is high and many factories and offices are underused, and imposing fiscal restraint several years from now, when output and employment will probably be close to their potential.

Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office
Please print out in the largest font convenient and post along with a similarly dimensioned sign saying Money is not real

The Unemployed can Go Die in the Streets

In which thebroadermarket summarizes a theoretical, GOP-derived wonderland that we here at Lemkin refer to as “Go Die in the Streets”:

Thus, one is left with a situation in which the unemployed would find few opportunities for work, while simultaneously seeing their social safety net dry up. Meanwhile, the lucky employed would see the security of their labor jeopardized at the expense of allowing the financial marketplace to continue to operate relatively uninhibited. I am not one prone to hyperbole, but this just seems like a raw deal.

Read the whole thing

I am prone to hyperbole. But that would be shrill.