A 1932 Low cartoon via Luke Ashworth via Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.
I promise I am grading, but Ken Rogoff was just sounding like a total idiot (sorry, nothing pejorative intended for those who truly deserve our support) arguing (need I even add badly?) with Paul Krugman on Fareed Zakaria's GPS. So I can't help myself.
We do need to do whatever possible to shake this President out of his torpor. Here is the beginning of a campaign I just posted on Economist's View, and will be posting wherever there are smart readers. Quoting
"C'mon Mr. President!!! 400,000 jobs a month. Private, public, we need them all. If Plouffe and Daley disagree, tell them to get with the program.
Listen to your economists, present and former. Romer in particular is showing the right brand of spunk ... watch her Bill Maher appearance... and has the economics right. Sperling has both the politics and the economics right. 400,000 pragmatic jobs a month. Hell or high water. You're the President. C'mon.
Here's just one of many links to Romer (this one from HuffPo):
Send the kids out of the room."
I am actually beginning to like Christy Romer in spite of past peccadilloes.
Ok, back to grading, but not before I pose a related question: How is that austerity thing going after the riots this week Mr. Prime Minister Cameron?
Great cartoon. Robert Reich argued that the White House knows all of this, but apparently decided to concentrate on being 'reasonable' trying to deal with the deficit problem, in order to blame the GOP for its inability to reduce it. All politics (bad, by the way) no economics.
ReplyDeleteUnderstood, Matias. But dang, or my new favorite in the spirit of Christy Romer, pretty darned..., pretty clearly all the complaining, logic, etc. just have no traction. Even I can barely stand to wade through all the oxen that appear out of ditches in something like Mark Thoma's otherwise so useful blog.
ReplyDeleteSo, what I think is we have to get something just so simple and positive that anyone can understand and defend it, and then repeat it over and over and over again just to break through the noise. So 400K jobs per month, hell or high water. Forget for the moment how much behind that needs to be sorted out, just get the idea going. That only gets us back to neutral minus population growth in THREE years for crying out ... pretty darned.