Tag: krugman

southpol:

The Third Depression:

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

I’d agree with all that Krugman says above (and in the editorial), but take small issue with this part:

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery.

I think the GOP leadership realizes all too well that not enough has been done. They have chosen to use the crisis for short-term political gain. There is no other explanation for the withdrawal of unemployment benefits. None. They just want to maximize pain to the citizens out there that may be inclined to vote come 2010 and, more urgently from the GOP perspective, in the 2012 follow-on when they could well be poised to take power in both branches.

Then, of course, they’ll fix it all with a rigorous program of tax cuts for the wealthy. Which is touched on in the closer:

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

Yep.

Oilbama

Krugman makes predictions on just how it is that Obama will be blamed for the oil platform explosion and subsequent mess:

Will it be claims that liberals and/or scientific conspirators sabotaged the rig, to undermine good Americans who want to drillheredrillnow? (Michael Crichton already wrote that novel).

Will it be that oil workers, demoralized by the march of socialism, fell into despair and let the accident happen?

Will it be claims that since this didn’t happen under Bush, it obviously shows that Obamanomics is responsible?

Apparently Rush has already started in on choice #1.

I think my vote is more along the lines of

“…and I think it’s clear that this accident only happened because we aren’t drilling enough. These poor companies are over-working what they have because they can’t make a walkable ring of oil platforms that encircles Florida. This sort of lunatic under-drilling leads directly to the sort of accidents we’ve seen off the coast of Louisiana, Wolf. That, and I might just mention that Biden used the F-word.”

Which, by the way, I’m for installing. So there’s that. Thank me later, Florida.

Wolf’s answer to that statement, you ask?

“Alright, we have to leave it there.”

What the fuck else does he ever say?

…the e-mail messages you should be focusing on are the ones from employees at the credit rating agencies, which bestowed AAA ratings on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of dubious assets, nearly all of which have since turned out to be toxic waste. […] of AAA-rated subprime-mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006, 93 percent — 93 percent! — have now been downgraded to junk status.

Paul Krugman, describing the real “shitty deal” that’s barely receiving notice:
the utter scam that is the ratings agencies.

The basic picture of the federal government you should have in mind is that it’s essentially a huge insurance company with an army; Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — all of which spend the great bulk of their funds on making payments, not on administration — plus defense are the big items.

Paul Krugman, demonstrating the sort of simple yet incisive and instructive logic that won him the Nobel Prize.

Starve the Beast

Paul Krugman notes that the GOP has collectively been working for around three decades to bring on the catastrophic nexus, “preparing the ground” for the moment at which they can cut wildly popular programs like Medicare and Social Security in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” Unfortunately, with that day all but at hand, the GOP finds itself unwilling to pull the trigger and say these long-held beliefs publicly:

At this point, then, Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they’re not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. And they’re not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, either, because that might force them to explain their plan — and there isn’t any plan, except to regain power.

Absolutely right. And but Krugman goes on to note in today’s column that the state of the California health insurance system generally and the recent Anthem move to raise rates by ~30% specifically put to lie everything the GOP is saying about national health insurance reforms:

some claim that health costs would fall dramatically if only insurance companies were allowed to sell policies across state lines. But California is already a huge market, with much more insurance competition than in other states; unfortunately, insurers compete mainly by trying to excel in the art of denying coverage to those who need it most. And competition hasn’t averted a death spiral. So why would creating a national market make things better?

More broadly, conservatives would have you believe that health insurance suffers from too much government interference. In fact, the real point of the push to allow interstate sales is that it would set off a race to the bottom, effectively eliminating state regulation. But California’s individual insurance market is already notable for its lack of regulation, certainly as compared with states like New York — yet the market is collapsing anyway.

Finally, there have been calls for minimalist health reform that would ban discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions and stop there. It’s a popular idea, but as every health economist knows, it’s also nonsense. For a ban on medical discrimination would lead to higher premiums for the healthy, and would, therefore, cause more and bigger death spirals.

So California’s woes show that conservative prescriptions for health reform just won’t work.

To which we say: yep, even though Krugman starts with a straw-man in there. Some? How about “GOP leaders in the House and Senate say” or any other construction there? Some? That’s Bush league usage.

But, I think the synthesis of these two articles is what actually provides the way forward. We’ve said it before: Democrats can’t bring themselves to move good policy and the GOP categorically can’t resist bad policy, so combine the two. Spend a few years “preparing the ground” just as the GOP did on forcing government into the present fiscal situation in hopes of eviscerating the New Deal once and for all. Make it such that, when the inevitable happens, the end result will require the desired policy solution.
This means that you just pass into law the super-popular and death-spiral inducing community rating and tack on whatever meaningless and ineffective tort and state-lines “reform” the GOP wants to make that poison pill pass. Both sides celebrate. Then wait five years. Even conservatives agree that:

the country will face a choice: allow the numbers of uninsured to continue shooting up, or enroll more and more people directly in taxpayer-funded government insurance plans.

At the collapse of health insurance in this country, the GOP will be forced to roll out Medicare for all; after all, there will be no functional private insurance industry left to protect. Even the very rich will be priced out. Nothing gets the GOP’s attention more quickly than a situation like that.
Just think of the day that Single Payer is finally signed into law by President Palin. Likewise, the new Democratic majority will return to a Senate free from the filibuster as, everyone knows, that will be the first thing to go once the GOP is back in charge over there.

Somewhere, off in the distance, a dog barked.

[What often goes unmentioned is] the extent to which the deficit hysterics are also deficit peacocks. They’re full of bombast, and eager to shoot down anything that might reduce unemployment. But when it comes to serious proposals to bring the long-run fiscal outlook under control — which means, above all, doing something about health care costs — all we get is the sound of crickets chirping.

Paul Krugman

Free to vote

Democratic leaders in the Senate are asking colleagues who are reluctant to support Bernanke’s nomination for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman to nevertheless vote with them to end a filibuster and allow a vote on the actual nomination. The reluctant members would then be free to vote no to express their displeasure.

Of course, for everything else, a vote for/against cloture is somehow magically indistinguishable from a vote for/against final passage. Un-fucking-believable. And you can bet that every last motherfucker on the yes-cloture no-confirmation list is somebody who’s come out all “there’s no difference between cloture and final passage” before. And will expect (and experience) no blow-back from this sort of utter hypocrisy.

And we wonder why these fucktards fail. As Krugman notes: “I can hardly think of anything more calculated to solidify the view that Wall Street doesn’t have to play by the rules that apply to everyone else.” Yep.

The Democrat as currently constituted is utterly and completely unfit to govern. At least they won’t have to worry about it anymore come 2010/2012. Then they can go back to going along with whatever the GOP says to do, all in the name of comity.

I say again: any Democrat, or fucking execrable fucktard that is allowed to caucus with them, that votes against cloture on a key issue or critical Democratic initiative should promptly find themselves so far down the seniority tree that they are often unable to purchase bean salad at the Senate cafeteria. Period. Until that happens, you’ll end up with the shit-sandwich we’ve been eating since they took over in record fashion.

In the same vein: You want to start over on insurance reform, GOP? Fine, as a first step towards that exciting new future, let’s pass a revocation of all health care provisions, including Medicare, for all serving members of Congress and their families, effective immediately; furthermore, we will tie any and all future health plans for same to the costliest option offered under any new legislation. Put your fucking market money where your fucking market mouth is, motherfuckers.

Is this all so very complicated?

Pass. The. Damned. Bill.

Today’s installment of What Paul Krugman Said:

A message to House Democrats: This is your moment of truth. You can do the right thing and pass the Senate health care bill. Or you can look for an easy way out, make excuses and fail the test of history.

Tuesday’s Republican victory in the Massachusetts special election means that Democrats can’t send a modified health care bill back to the Senate. That’s a shame because the bill that would have emerged from House-Senate negotiations would have been better than the bill the Senate has already passed. But the Senate bill is much, much better than nothing. And all that has to happen to make it law is for the House to pass the same bill, and send it to President Obama’s desk.

[…]

[S]ome Democrats want to just give up on the whole thing. That would be an act of utter political folly. It wouldn’t protect Democrats from charges that they voted for “socialist” health care – remember, both houses of Congress have already passed reform. All it would do is solidify the public perception of Democrats as hapless and ineffectual.

And, let me just add: this asinine idea that you can chop the bill up into component parts is both functionally impossible and utterly improbable. So: the GOP is suddenly going to agree to operate in the best interests of the public? Since when? Seriously, when was the last incident of the GOP acting as though it had any responsibility re: actually governing. Name it. I’d seriously like to know. You could offer them full revocation of all taxes, closure of the IRS, and immediate shuttering of 85% of all government offices outside military and interstate highways and they’d still say: Hells No. Even better, from their entirely predictable point of view: the chop-it-up approach then ties up all legislative action for MONTHS as you serially run the mini-bills out for failed vote after failed vote after failed vote. All of which, of course, end in giant collective failure and a total lack of action on the things people are hopping mad about: the banks, Wall Street reforms, and jobs initiatives. Which, not coincidentally, are precisely the issues the Democrat could utterly crucify the 41-vote GOP with for the next eight or so months, right up until the 2010 mid-terms.They are AGAINST all of those things. And will vote to prove it. Unfortunately, they won’t be given the chance.

What part of the months-long slow-roll of the “negotiations” that went on from August to December of last year have the Democrats suddenly forgotten? The GOP wanted no part of compromise or some mythical “centrist” option. They DO NOT WANT TO PASS HEALTH REFORM OF ANY KIND, no matter what its shape, size, composition, font, paper quality, or decorative binding may be. Repeat: THE GOP is FUNDAMENTALLY and COMPLETELY against ANY REFORM. Full fucking stop.

Democrats, you’ve got two choices:

  1. Pass the fucking thing. You ALREADY DID. Those votes counted, you know. Pass, fail or abandon, those votes will hang around your necks like so many albatrosses. Better to have a useful outcome to point to than, you know, more months of utterly feckless failures.
  2. Pass a substantial expansion of Medicare and Medicaid, with Medicare buy-in over, say 45 or 50, paid for by some version of the Cadillac Tax on the wealthy. You know, what Ezra said. This would represent a substantial step forward, and can, without a doubt, go through reconciliation and would be a major fucking achievement that could start the day the bill was signed and, more importantly, people would actually like.

That’s it. Those are your choices. Why this is so fucking hard to understand after the display across the last 10 or more years up there is well and truly beyond me.

Fuck this up and it’s over. Democrats will be functionally out of power in 2010, totally out in 2012; Obama recalled as little more than Carter2. I’d say the odds for this outcome are pretty much 80/20 in favor of exactly that happening. If only the Democrat had a powerful leader with charisma and a strong public following. Somebody like that could take charge of this cluster fuck, start giving legislative marching orders, and navigate the turbulent political waters. But that guy has Rahm fucking Emanuel whispering in his ear. Odds go to at least 85/15.

Merry Christmas.