Continental Illinois Bank Building
How is the US ever going to get out of its economic doldrums when the attention of politicians and the media is so focused on Wall Street and whether the Dow Jones Industrial Average goes down a few points?
Paul Krugman discusses:
Consider one crucial measure, the ratio of employment to population. In June 2007, around 63 percent of adults were employed. In June 2009, the official end of the recession, that number was down to 59.4. As of June 2011, two years into the alleged recovery, the number was: 58.2.
These may sound like dry statistics, but they reflect a truly terrible reality. Not only are vast numbers of Americans unemployed or underemployed, for the first time since the Great Depression many American workers are facing the prospect of very-long-term — maybe permanent — unemployment. Among other things, the rise in long-term unemployment will reduce future government revenues, so we’re not even acting sensibly in purely fiscal terms. But, more important, it’s a human catastrophe.
And why should we be surprised at this catastrophe? Where was growth supposed to come from? Consumers, still burdened by the debt that they ran up during the housing bubble, aren’t ready to spend. Businesses see no reason to expand given the lack of consumer demand. And thanks to that deficit obsession, government, which could and should be supporting the economy in its time of need, has been pulling back.
(click here to continue reading The Wrong Worries – NYTimes.com.)
The government can borrow money for basically nothing (interest rates were less than 1% this week1), so why don’t we invest in our crumbling infrastructure and put people to work? Sewers, bridges, energy grids, public transit and commuter rail, even highways if we must, but do something productive!
Sidewalks Never Sleep
More Krugman:
To turn this disaster around, a lot of people are going to have to admit, to themselves at least, that they’ve been wrong and need to change their priorities, right away.
Of course, some players won’t change. Republicans won’t stop screaming about the deficit because they weren’t sincere in the first place: Their deficit hawkery was a club with which to beat their political opponents, nothing more — as became obvious whenever any rise in taxes on the rich was suggested. And they’re not going to give up that club.
But the policy disaster of the past two years wasn’t just the result of G.O.P. obstructionism, which wouldn’t have been so effective if the policy elite — including at least some senior figures in the Obama administration — hadn’t agreed that deficit reduction, not job creation, should be our main priority. Nor should we let Ben Bernanke and his colleagues off the hook: The Fed has by no means done all it could, partly because it was more concerned with hypothetical inflation than with real unemployment, partly because it let itself be intimidated by the Ron Paul types.
Something needs to happen, and soon, before we’re all living in cardboard boxes, or afraid to walk down the street because some hungry fellow is going to rob you for your pennies so he can eat
Footnotes:- I thought I heard Paul Krugman say 0.25% on Keith Olbermann’s show, but I’m not positive [↩]