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Friday, February 06, 2009

Krugman Slaps Morning Joe With Truth; Tells Obama to Get on Offensive Before Catastrophe...

Posted by Melina | 1:50 PM

In today's New York Times Paul Krugman states some pretty stark realities about the edge we're teetering on:

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

I think there is a reason that Paul Krugman won the Nobel peace Prize in Economics, so I think I'll go with his view of the stimulus rather than Morning Schmoe's. Its not just that I disagree with Joe or his thuddingly simplistic and narcissistic view of whats happening, it's that we don't really have the luxury of listening to idiots seemingly nostalgic for Reaganomics. We used that up with Bush, and his plans didn't even have some destructive nostalgic past touchstone, unless you want to count the Third Reich.

I don't know if the suits at MSNBC think that its good for ratings to have these people on television every morning to spew simplistic crap, and then have someone like Krugman on to disprove it, but in terms that are maybe hard to understand at the crack o' dawn. I had to watch this a few times myself, but maybe that's just me. I think it would be better for everyone if we didn't have to start with a week of lies and propaganda before we get to the meat of this thing:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Krugman continues, in the face of the pundits waxing on about conservative values and how bending the truth about slumps of the past and the Great Depression"

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

Listen to this guy; people are losing their jobs left and right in my area, and those who are secure are not spending. At some point the conservatives have to stop and decide if they want to be contrary or they want to save this country. It's that simple, because Krugman thinks that the package is too small, and that Obama is gonna have to stand up and explain to us in stark terms why it shouldn't be cut anymore...forget the friendly approach to this; we are in a kind of trouble that we can't base on stories of the past.

You can let MSNBC know what you think of Morning Joe and similar programming here.

c/p RIP Coco

Labels: Great Depression, Joe Scarborough, Paul Krugman, punditry, The Second Great Depression

3 comments

3 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it was necessary to show the the Republicans were not really interested in any sort of compromise before telling them to STFU. Now, if we can screw some backbone into Harry Reid....

2/6/09, 5:43 PM

Unknown said...

>...pretty stark realities about the edge we're teetering on...

It's interesting to see the "politics of fear" making such a comeback. We barely had time to miss it.

2/6/09, 6:50 PM

Rhode Island Rules said...

Thank you Paul, but these asshats will not listen to you. They will only talk over you if for no other reason than to listen to the sounds of their own voices. When the pitchforks and torches come for them or when their own personal gravy train stops because the economy collapses, we'll see their sudden change of heart.

2/6/09, 7:26 PM