The current media fervor for austerity measures instead of stimulus policies at a time when the economy is suffering from insufficient demand is nothing new. John Maynard Keynes’ media criticism in a 1931 letter to a journalist friend (Fabius Maximus; 6/21/10) could have been issued today:
To read the newspapers just now is to see Bedlam let loose. Every person in the country of super asinine propensities, everyone who hates social progress and loves deflation, feels that his hour has come, and triumphantly announces how, by refraining from every form of economic activity, we can become prosperous again.
(The quote can be found in Maynard Keynes: An Economist’s Biography, by Donald Edward Moggridge.)
Why can’t we have someone like him instead of Timothy Geitner?
NOW, they’re simply ass souls.
If our future “brave new world” continues in the direction that it really does seem the “media ferver” is pushing, I just hope I’m around long enough to watch them all go into shock when they realize that the “pie” doesn’t really get any bigger, and they’ve been used too. After all…
The middle and lower economic classes of the USA have endured the Long Austerity beginning in the 1970’s. The solution proposed in response to these symptoms of this public dis- ease is more austerity.
This is as if a medieval barber were to come across the bloody victim of an ox cart accident and attempt the rescue of the victim by doing a blood letting.
Stop subsidizing failure and punishing success!
This just in: The National Bureau of Economic Research has announce the recession ended in June of 2009.
The USA is no longer in recession but has achieved a new normal.
To quote the Future God, Orwell: (well paraphrase actually)
“Want to see a glimpse of the future? Imagine a boot grinding down on a face. Forever…”
Glen stop it.Your killing me.I cant stop laughing.It is like when Bush supposedly said mission accomplished.Or when Chamberlain waved his paper declaring peace in europe.Or when …well their is a million times political leaders said all is well ….right before the bull gores you in the arse.Depression,recession,,deflation ,inflation,stagflation ending up in bed with snooky(hey how did that get in there)bottom line is we are flooked.Up one side and down the other.Call it what you will son