Full Speed Ahead
| Sun Nov. 9, 2008 10:48 AM PST
FULL SPEED AHEAD....As regular readers know, I consider Fareed Zakaria an extremely reliable indicator of trends in mainstream Beltway thinking. So if he says Barack Obama should damn the fiscal torpedoes and move full speed ahead with his legislative agenda, that probably means most of Washington is starting to come around to that idea too.
Well, guess what? That's what Zakaria says. It's yet another piece of evidence that the battleship of state is turning before our eyes.
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Comments
Indeed, I was thinking the same thing this morning. What a refreshing thing to hear.
What a difference a week makes, eh? It felt like I was watching the Sunday talk shows on another planet. New fresh faces and old men talking about tears in their eyes. Did this really happen here?
We old men (I'm 52) who had tears in our eyes this week (oddly, for me the tears came the day after), have always been here. We just weren't interesting before Tuesday.
As to fiscal policy, it is time to "pull the Keynsian fire alarm" as Brad DeLong puts it.
No, rational. The consensus is that deficits may matter (there is no doubt disagreement just how much) but that the need to provide immediate stimulus in the present circumstance matters more.
In fact, given that the downturn very likely will last several years, infrastructure projects that take a year or two to start up may be considered part of a round of stimulus -- and FDR becomes a model.
Maybe, but I'd do a better op-ed survey.
Bank robbers tend to shift their MO over time. Perhaps get a bit more reckless or a bit more savvy or reach outside their comfort range to new targets. I think the caution that Fareed displayed in the past may at least be in part the result of oppressive conservative pressure post 911. He may yet develop into a rogue pundit.
idlemind, thanks for the clarification.
Somehow I don't like the stimulus idea. The bailout of the banks (bailout bill) as well as the bailout of the consumer (fiscal stimulus) are both attempting to prop up a credit based economy, such as what got us into this mess in the first place. There is no original thinking. There is no attempt to attack the root causes. We are simply attacking the symptoms and giving the patient a short term pain killer.
IMHO, we should go back to a simpler economy where everyone learns to live within their means and those who made reckless financial choices, companies and individuals, face consequences and learn from them. Sure there should be some safety net for highly unexpected events (9/11; families facing financial disaster due to external events etc). And whatever I'm saying also goes hand in hand with some sort of universal health care so families aren't thrown into a financial emergency because of disease and disability.
Finally, some rational advice:
IMHO, we should go back to a simpler economy where everyone learns to live within their means and those who made reckless financial choices, companies and individuals, face consequences and learn from them.
Coincidentally, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover agree with "rational" on this point.
Ask them how that turned out.
I think it's important to consider the type of spending Obama wants to pursue and the scale on which it might occur. If Obama's health care plan ends up costing about $150 billion a year, is that really going to break us? If it would right now, my guess is, we really have bigger problems.
Remember that many of the same people now claiming that his legislative priorities would have to take a backseat to new fiscal realities are also the same people who would use the $1 trillion in new spending figure as if it was a yearly occurrence, as opposed to some oddly figured statistic that may reflect reality over the course of several years.
Perhaps more than anything, I'd like to know when we could expect any sort of health care reform to take place. If it's early in the first year of his first term, then perhaps the final legislation would look different than if it became law a year from now, when things could possibly look better.
