Despite some recent signs the sluggish U.S. economy might be improving, President Barack Obama warns it could be years before the country is on a sound footing.
In excerpts from an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" program that will air on Sunday, Obama was asked whether he underestimated how difficult it would be to fix the U.S. economy when he became president in 2009.
"I always believed that this was a long-term project," the Democratic president told "60 Minutes." He added it would "take time" to reverse "structural problems in our economy that have been building up for two decades."
Obama added in the excerpts, released on Friday, that he thought "it was going to take more than two years. It was going to take more than one term. Probably takes more than one president.Reuters article and video at The Huffington Post
Obama 60 Minutes Interview: Economic Fix Could Take Years
POTUS is clueless, and the Democratic Establishment is clueless. They cannot blame all this on Bush policies and an intransigeant GOP. They just don't get that "It's the demand, stupid," and government is the only one that provide the fix.
They also don't get that the "structural problems" are institutional, and that major institutions, especially FIRE, as in need of overhaul. As a result, we are on target for the next crisis being worse than the one we are still digging out from very slowly.
MMT to the rescue!
4 comments:
I think that they get it, but that they cannot muster the political courage to "drink their booze, screw their women (or men), and take their money and still vote against them." The WH has never been more of a political institution, rather than a governing institution. Every decision is political rather than what's in the best interest of the country.
Obama knew that the stimulus was not enough when he crafted it. Yet he resisted any efforts at reducing the tax cut components or increasing the total package as not politically feasible. This was with 60 Dem senators and a 75 seat Dem majority in the House. And once Scott Brown gave the GOP the majority in the Senate, all was lost. (snark alert)
I would add that I've always thought that the Dems were grateful not to have that 60 senator threshold any longer. They could now block things for their 1% friends and blame it on the GOP.
@ Joe
Right. I usually write "clueless or complicit," or some of both.
Yes, Joe - Almost always: "politically infeasible" means: politically very feasible, very easy & absolutely necessary - except that I say it is not, because I irrationally & arbitrarily dictate infeasible limits to feasibility.
I don't think they do get it - they don't drink healthy old-fashioned booze, because they have all drunk too much Kool-Aid.
At least when Republicans propose tax cuts there are no serious spending cuts. When Obama calls for serious tax hikes, there are no serious spending hikes. Obama is Clinton-esque in his fixation on balancing budgets. Republicans just pretend.
Post a Comment