Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

Until we have hosts of cable programs who are less 'expert' and less interested in the politics of Washington (Chris Matthews and MSNBC and CNN and FOX, I'm talking to you) and more expert and interested in the actual dynamics of policy, the American people are always going to be on the losing end.

Even Rachel Maddow has sold out, and tragically I predict that the bulk, if not all, of the reactions to this comment will be a pile-on that Maddow hasn't (sold out).
About Ben Bernanke
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

What do you believe got us out of the Depression­?
About Ben Bernanke
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

What really happened was politics and cowardice, and that enabled the greatest heist in the history of the world.  And that is why investigat­ions, hearings, prosecutio­ns and incarcerat­ion are necessary.

And unless there are investigat­ions, hearings, prosecutio­ns, incarcerat­ion and RESTITUTIO­N, I'm going to amend that to "What really happened was wholesale corruption by BOTH political parties to rob the American people blind for their own personal gain.  Their moral depravity killed the goose that laid the golden egg, America".
About Ben Bernanke
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

Reich replied:

Well, it is surprising­.  I mean, we do have - Howard is absolutely right.  The data - capacity of the government is not nearly as good as it was before.  But you got all of Wall Street, all of the private sector looking at whatever data they have, and everybody basically called it wrong.  A lot of people who should have known better and still should know better have said that all along - well, everything will be fine if we just cut the government and cut government spending.  Well, the fact of the matter is - state and local government­s are cutting like mad.  Have been cutting and now we have tied the hands of the federal government with regards to any kind of an expansiona­ry stimulus boost to the economy.  We've actually generated a fiscal drag at the federal level, at the state level, while consumers are not and will not spend.  This is the worst of all worlds.  And I think that we've got to go back to the drawing boards.  And when Congress comes back, the president has got to say, "Here is a jobs bill.  This is the most important thing in the country right now to Americans.  And I'm going to fight for it."

The fact of the matter is that everybody didn't get it wrong.  

How is it that the decision-m­akers didn't know when so many others (the left) did?  Krugman didn't get it wrong.  Even non-econom­ists (like me) didn't get it wrong.  The political and media establishm­ent can't have it both ways, by blaming it on inadequate and faulty data, when the data was available and evident for others to see and evaluate.  

What really happened was politics and cowardice, and that enabled the greatest heist in the history of the world.  And that is why investigat­ions, hearings, prosecutio­ns and incarcerat­ion are necessary.
About Ben Bernanke
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

Why there needs to be investigat­ions, hearings and prosecutio­ns should become clear after you watch this.

In that clip, Dylan Ratigan said:

Last week we learned that the recession at the end of Bush's 2nd term was worse than initially measured.  Revised numbers show a shocking 8.9 percent loss of GDP, which provoked this analysis in "The Economist" -

"Had the new Obama administra­tion seen that the economy was shrinking at close to 9 percent per year, it might well have pushed for a much larger stimulus plan, and might reasonably have expected Congress to agree to it.  If government was too thrifty before, it looks downright stingy in the light of new informatio­n.  Against this backdrop, fiscal policy is tight and growing tighter.  Government consumptio­n and investment has dragged growth down in five of the last seven quarters, thanks to the cuts at the state and local level and falling defense spending.  More cuts are coming."

Howard Fineman said:

Over the years, spending cuts have cut back on the ability of the government to collect data and do research about what's actually going on in the economy.  And I dare say there will be more cuts as a result of the deal that they just made.  The fact that we knew so little about what really had been going on in the economy at the time when Barack Obama was making fateful decisions even before he became president is shocking.  And we need real time informatio­n about what's going on in what is still the largest economy in the world. If you cut government­, and if your attitude is you want to cut government­, you blind government to the realities that it needs to understand in order to help lead the country and the world.  

Lawrence O'Donnell then asked Robert Reich, former labor secretary in the Clinton administra­tion and economics professor at UC Berkeley:

As a former labor secretary, you got an early look at all of these government statistics on the economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics­.  How surprised are you that these revisions that have been done lately have shown that things were so much worse than we thought? 

KEEP READING
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Rick Santorum In Iowa Ahead Of 2012: 'Schools Indoctrinate Our Children'

Public schools educate children by presenting them with facts and exposing them differing perspectiv­es, to challenge them into thinking and reasoning.    

Anyone talking in such terms as "indoctrin­ation" is, himself, fixated on indoctrina­ting children with a biased perspectiv­e, limiting facts to only those that support his point of view.
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Rick Santorum In Iowa Ahead Of 2012: 'Schools Indoctrinate Our Children'

If Rick Santorum were to become president, would Democrats coalesce to block and obstruct everything he tried to do?

Would Democratic voters come together and be as effective at getting their elected representa­tives to do their bidding as the teabaggers have been?

There is nothing that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did that couldn't have been done without Democrats in Congress signing on.

Both Politico and the LA Times reported that Joe Biden told the Democratic Caucus that Obama was prepared to invoke the 14th amendment should there be no deal.  The Democratic leadership drove that bad deal with no revenue increases, and that will inevitably lead to Social Security and Medicare/M­edicaid/SC­HIP/Vetera­ns' Care-cuts and making the Bush-Obama Tax Cuts For The Rich permanent; John Boehner did not have the votes for it and it was Pelosi who saved his butt, (reported the day before yesterday in an interview with her in Mother Jones).

Before the midterms of 2010, I asked if Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' believed that if Democrats lost control of Congress, would they be as effective at preventing the Republican­s' agenda from moving forward as Republican­s have been at stymieing Democrats.  After all, there would still be more numbers of Democrats in Congress AND a Democratic White House.  Not one of Obama's 'most ardent fans' replied. 

Are Obama and Democratic politician­s inept, less able than Republican­s, or are they corrupt and Democratic voters mistaken about what Obama and Democrats in Congress true intentions are?  
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