Rinse And Repeat

Outgoing Obama Administration chief economist Christina Romer painted a dark picture of the United States’ economic status, tacitly admitting that the “stimulus” package that she championed has failed.

The prescription offered by Romer and many other Democrats (most insistently, Paul Krugman) is the same — more “stimulus”.  Having admitted that $800 billion didn’t work, they say more of the same.  The logic is curious.  Even whether it can be called logic at all is questionable.  At a minimum, it begs the question of how much more would finally be “enough”.  Or would another “stimulus” (funded solely by debt piled atop an already unprecedented fiscal deficit) also fail to produce the holy grail of full employment, resulting in just another demand for another stimulus, rise and repeat?

My mind is open, actually.  I certainly don’t see much promise in the Republican (pseudo-)proposals to cut taxes (again resulting in more debt) and hope that increased investments will somehow shower forth in spite of the fact that the recovery in equity markets during the last year has failed to produce any such effect.  And just doing nothing makes the American future look a lot like Japan’s recent past — deflationary stagnation.

But because they refuse to discuss anything beyond the most shallow political level (e.g. Republicans are obstructionists who just want the poor to starve), liberal economists promoting a Keynesian proposal can’t provide a decent explanation of how their plan would actually work.

The scary thought is that their preference for name-calling might just be a mask for their lack of confidence that their plan would work any better than it did in 2009.