Paul Krugman Joins "Chimps on Crack"

Describes Obama's (and America's) Failure

You may recall I had mentioned that on Facebook, someone had complained that criticizing Lord and Savior Obama was akin to jumping around like a chimp on crack. In another Facebook thread, one Obama defender said that instead of reading insightful moi, you should be reading somebody like Nobel Prize-winning Paul Krugman, who would give you "real reasoning", and presumably a different conclusion than my own, that the Savior was failing.

I replied that I was pretty sure Krugman's position and my own were similar.

Yeah well—read him and figure it out for yourself.

Let's see:

"Failure to Rise"

"Mr. Obama’s victory feels more than a bit like defeat."

"The stimulus bill looks helpful but inadequate, especially when combined with a disappointing plan for rescuing the banks."

"And the politics of the stimulus fight have made nonsense of Mr. Obama’s postpartisan dreams."

To be fair, in his article Krugman reserves the f-word, "failure", to describe the policies of Republicans, but he says Obama and the Dems are in danger of being half-assed failures—in other words what they usually are—wimpy versions of Republicans.

He also calls the Republicans "deranged", which I would say is accurate as well, and I would add "fascist", which isn't necessarily the same thing, but is headed in that direction anyway.

Basically, Krugman says Obama was two trillion dollars short in his demand for an economic fix, and while some people will get helped by what Congress will likely pass today, the US will probably stay mired in a depressive recession for a lot longer now than it had to be. Some people are actually talking 4-6 years of a bad recession—if we're "lucky". That's beginning to sound more and more like a depression, huh?

Krugman says so far Obama is acting too Japanese, referring to Japan's "Lost Decade" of the 1990's, when nothing the government there tried could pull Japan out of recession. It is alleged that the problem in Japan was that the government was fearful of spending too much money, so it didn't spend nearly enough to stimulate its economy out of recession. Krugman has argued that is what is going on here too, that conservative forces and inclinations will likely keep us mired in a recession for a very long time.

Krugman concludes that if Obama doesn't change his ways and start demanding more vigorous measures to right the economy, "the verdict on this crisis might be that no, we can't."

Well, at least Krugman's a Chimp on Crack who has the Nobel Prize. And we're proud to have him as a member.

(jk)