2008 Woodie Awards
A state of economic turmoil
John Glaser, Collegian Columnist
Issue date: 12/4/08 Section: Editorial / Opinion
On the eve of Bush's departure from office, barely anybody is unfamiliar with the ever deepening hole of debt this administration has conferred upon this country. In defending the invasion of Iraq and simultaneously cutting taxes, vice president Dick Cheney blithely reminded us a few years ago that "deficits don't matter."
Obama has, in recent weeks, candidly assured us he will hold the same view in applying his agenda: uninhibited spending of money we don't have for hopeless political schemes superficially meant to save us from anything that the powerful deem villainous, be it Saddam or Wall Street.
Concern for deficit spending and indebtedness (now in record territory) takes a back seat, he says, to his expensive but enlightened deeds of control.
At the forefront of this promotion of profligacy are economists of the Keynesian ilk. Paul Krugman has been pressuring for "a very large fiscal expansion to keep the economy from going into free fall," as if federal squandering of capital has a negative correlation with a poor economy.
Excessive government borrowing and inflation discourages private investment and drives up interest rates; never a recipe for economic recovery.
Even if we accept Krugman's and Obama's propositions as plausible, we still have no reason, historical, logical or otherwise, to believe that this fiscal expansion will be of a responsible and effective nature. The chairwoman of the oversight panel for these bailouts said just this week that the government has no coherent strategy for easing the financial crisis.
They are clueless, but wrongheaded too because with more spending prerogative, the government has more power. With more power comes more trillion-dollar wars, more harmful social constructions and less accountability.
All this scrambling to preempt economic hardship stems from the American belief in the permanence of economic growth, which, journalist Robert Samuelson says, is exactly what has undone economic growth.
Obama has, in recent weeks, candidly assured us he will hold the same view in applying his agenda: uninhibited spending of money we don't have for hopeless political schemes superficially meant to save us from anything that the powerful deem villainous, be it Saddam or Wall Street.
Concern for deficit spending and indebtedness (now in record territory) takes a back seat, he says, to his expensive but enlightened deeds of control.
At the forefront of this promotion of profligacy are economists of the Keynesian ilk. Paul Krugman has been pressuring for "a very large fiscal expansion to keep the economy from going into free fall," as if federal squandering of capital has a negative correlation with a poor economy.
Excessive government borrowing and inflation discourages private investment and drives up interest rates; never a recipe for economic recovery.
Even if we accept Krugman's and Obama's propositions as plausible, we still have no reason, historical, logical or otherwise, to believe that this fiscal expansion will be of a responsible and effective nature. The chairwoman of the oversight panel for these bailouts said just this week that the government has no coherent strategy for easing the financial crisis.
They are clueless, but wrongheaded too because with more spending prerogative, the government has more power. With more power comes more trillion-dollar wars, more harmful social constructions and less accountability.
All this scrambling to preempt economic hardship stems from the American belief in the permanence of economic growth, which, journalist Robert Samuelson says, is exactly what has undone economic growth.
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