Yesterday we had Geithner and Summers saying “the deficits that we have brought on are too high, so we may have to raise taxes on the middle class” (well, they didn’t say the “that we brought on” part, but they should have…).
Now we have Gibbs overriding them.
Anyone believe Robert Gibbs/Obama?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
We’re out of the economic woods. Things are looking up. Unemployment is rising. Manufacturing is moribund. Foreclosures are at all time highs. Foreigners are getting nervous about our bonds… and currency. But the crisis is over.
How do we know this? The Google Index.
Of all the statistics pouring into the White House every day, top economic adviser Larry Summers highlighted one Friday to make his case that the economic free-fall has ended.
The number of people searching for the term “economic depression” on Google is down to normal levels, Summers said.
Searches for the term were up four-fold when the recession deepened in the earlier part of the year, and the recent shift goes to show consumer confidence is higher, Summers told the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
One of the amazing things about this Administration is the way some really smart people will say disturbingly dumb things to defend it. One is uncertain of their motivation but the phenomenon is undeniable.
I can think of a lot of reasons why searches for “economic depression” might fluctuate that have nothing to do with predictions of the economic condition of the nation. Maybe they remembered the concept after one search? Maybe they’ve been evicted and longer have access to a computer? I can’t imagine there is a significant number of people out there who repeatedly search for “economic depression” because they remain worried about their jobs and being able to pay the mortgage.
Back in 2005 when Larry Summers launched into his ill-fated exposition on why women are inferior to men in math skills (and measuring distance, for that matter), MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins walked out of his talk later saying that if she hadn’t left, ”I would’ve either blacked out or thrown up.” I know how she feels. Right now I’d know I don’t know whether to crap or go blind and I can’t leave.
With the federal deficit spiraling out of control, with unemployment approaching 10 percent, and with confidence in the Obama economic plan waning, it might be useful to go back and look at what team Obama promised if the porkulus passed:
Articles on personality conflicts do not end up getting great exposure in the New York Times by coincidence. Someone has to push the story. Someone has to give the story credibility. And someone has to get sources to talk.
That is why Larry Summers should be starting his own death watch this morning. Jackie Calmes paints a picture of a sell out hindering the economic recovery of America. With unemployment numbers coming in even higher than what Obama said they’d be if his stimulus did not pass, someone must be made the scapegoat. Scapegoat, thy name is Larry.
How do I know it is Rahm Emanuel? Well, there are a couple of reasons why I know it.
The White House’s Director of the National Economic Council. That’s who.
I keep waiting for our vaunted mainstream media to point out that the stimulus package, as currently constructed, not only defies what history has to teach us concerning the efficacy of Keynesian stimulus, it also goes against what many of the President’s own policymakers have said in the past concerning the implementation of Keynesian stimulus packages. Larry Summers’s verdict on the ideal shape of a Keynesian stimulus package is a lot more sympathetic to Keynes than is mine but the Obama Administration’s plan does not even measure up to Summers’s ideal Keynesian stimulus package.
I admit that a Summers v. Summers debate on the efficacy of the Administration’s economic plan would be an entertaining one. I’d pay good money to watch it. But the mere existence of such a debate should set off alarm bells that perhaps, just perhaps, the Obama Administration’s stimulus plan needs some serious reworking.
