~~~

BR: They must have been paying attention to the right wing which blamed everything on Clinton. The difference is the Left wing was doing it 30 days after W departed, the right wing 8 years after Clinton . . .

I hadn’t realized that Amity Shlaes is a “senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations.” I kind of wonder what it takes to get made a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations. She’s got a bachelor’s degree in English and her columns once won a prize from a libertarian organization for some articles that “compared the failing economy of high-taxed and over-regulated US state of Maine to the success of the increasingly economically liberal Ireland; and showed that US workers benefit from taking responsibility for their own pensions.” That’s it.

I have a really, really, really hard time imagining the CFR doing something comparable for a liberal with so little in the way of relevant qualifications or track-record outside an ideological cocoon. Just saying. Where’s my fellowship?

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/12/qualifications_i_can_believe_in.php

In other words “Keynesian” economists understand (we hope) that deficit spending year after year after year after year after… makes for bad policy. Even the wiki page manages to make this distinction:

“Keynes argued that the solution to depression was to stimulate the economy…”

The wiki page is actually pretty good reading, not sure if it’s right but check the page discussion and I’m sure you’ll get a bunch of sides of this story…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian

Didn’t Keynesian policies result in fifteen years of recession/depression from 1930-1945? How exactly did government spending “work”?

From where I sit Keynesian policies over the past 38 years have resulted in massive imbalances in our economy (i.e. 70% of GDP is consumption) as well as huge misallocation of capital (e.g. hummers, disney trips, speculation in housing).

Government spending with money that is printed into existence will not produce prosperity anymore than I can dunk on a fifteen foot basketball rim. Simply does not happen logically.

Am I missing something?

Krugman makes no sense to me.

When you have ’surplus’ — cut taxes
When you have a war — cut taxes
When you are out of power, your rallying cry to get into power: cut taxes
When there is a recession — cut taxes
When there is a depression — cut taxes
When you are out of work, and looking to gain traction in the book market — cut taxes.

Sing it with me now:
‘we’re gonna cut taxes til there ain’t no more
we’re gonna cut taxes, we’re going to war
We’re gonna cut taxes, but we love to spend
We’re gonna cut taxes, that way we can lend

Oh and PS: cut regulation too, this makes your economy more ‘attractive’ to business.

That must be why all the businesses are folding — too much regulation.

I wonder when business is going to start being attractive to us…

“Consumers Don’t Cause Recessions” –> Recessions Don’t Cause Consumers

Tada!

Thanks PFL. Unfortunately, wingnuts and libertarians are impervious to facts.

Let’s see, according to “Historical Statistics of the United States” via Encarta, the unemployment rate by year was:

1932 22%
1933 25%
1934 19%
1935 18%
1936 14%
1937 12% <—-
1938 18%
1939 16%

(Numbers are approximate, due to Encarta geek not knowing how to scale an axis).

Note that the unemployment rate was dropping, until 1937. In ‘37, Roosevelt made the mistake of listening to those voices who advocated balancing the budget (via cuts), and the rate started back up.

So listen, before you start quoting “statistics”, you might want to do some actual research. There’s something call “The Google” which can help with that.

Krugman fantasy? Only in the eyes of the dead-enders.