[lbo-talk] Tea Party: less than meets the eye

Jordan Hayes jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com
Mon Nov 8 17:26:36 PST 2010


Wojtek writes:


> He also says that O should have tried to push a bigger
> stimulus even though he may have failed to push it
> through Congress ...

I really don't agree. I've never once seen Krugman even imply that Obama should have gone bigger *despite the political infeasibility*. It's just not his point of view that you're projecting onto him. In fact, whenever Krugman strays into the political arena, he a) disclaims much expertise; and b) usually puts forth a weak effort, underscoring (a). The only political angle he's had on the stimulus issue is that if it didn't work, it might be worth it to say "See? The Republicans kept us from getting this fixed!" -- which I think we can all agree isn't a very sophisticated political position at all.

Krugman has bent over backwards to put forth his opinion of why Obama didn't get the stimulus bigger than it was: because he didn't believe it was necessary. Some of that is Obama's fault, and some of it is his advisor's fault. He has never said that it was politically impossible, and he wouldn't want you to listen to him if he did.

Maybe Krugman should get a private audience with Geithner to find out why they didn't go bigger; it's apparently easy to get:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-04/geithner-visited-jon-stewart-last-april-to-talk-about-economy-not-comedy.html

/jordan



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