> I also think that you [Marv] are overly optimistic on what
> was possible for Democrats to do about bad economy. I agree
> that they should have been more aggressive about Repug attacks
> but beyond that I do not think there was much more they could
> have done. This is pretty much Krugman's point - more should
> have been done to stimulate the economy, but that was not
> politically feasible at this time.
I don't think that's Krugman's point at all:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/opinion/25krugman.html
|> To avoid this fate, America needed a much stronger
|> program than what it actually got - a modest rise in
|> federal spending that was barely enough to offset
|> cutbacks at the state and local level. This isn't
|> 20-20 hindsight: the inadequacy of the stimulus was
|> obvious from the beginning.
|>
|> Could the administration have gotten a bigger stimulus
|> through Congress? Even if it couldn't, would it have
|> been better off making the case for a bigger plan,
|> rather than pretending that what it got was just right?
|> We'll never know.
|>
|> What we do know is that the inadequacy of the stimulus
|> has been a political catastrophe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/opinion/05krugman.html
|> Could Mr. Obama actually have offered such a plan?
|> He might not have been able to get a big plan through
|> Congress, or at least not without using extraordinary
|> political tactics. Still, he could have chosen to be
|> bold - to make Plan A the passage of a truly adequate
|> economic plan, with Plan B being to place blame for the
|> economy's troubles on Republicans if they succeeded in
|> blocking such a plan.
|>
|> But he chose a seemingly safer course: a medium-size
|> stimulus package that was clearly not up to the task.
|> And that's not 20/20 hindsight. In early 2009, many
|> economists, yours truly included, were more or less
|> frantically warning that the administration's proposals
|> were nowhere near bold enough.
|>
|> Worse, there was no Plan B.
/jordan