When Zombies Win

[mgc1961]

When historians look back at 2008-10, what will puzzle them most, I believe, is the strange triumph of failed ideas. Free-market fundamentalists have been wrong about everything — yet they now dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever.

How did that happen? How, after runaway banks brought the economy to its knees, did we end up with Ron Paul, who says “I don’t think we need regulators,” about to take over a key House panel overseeing the Fed? How, after the experiences of the Clinton and Bush administrations — the first raised taxes and presided over spectacular job growth; the second cut taxes and presided over anemic growth even before the crisis — did we end up with bipartisan agreement on even more tax cuts?

The answer from the right is that the economic failures of the Obama administration show that big-government policies don’t work. But the response should be, what big-government policies?

Read on at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/opinion/20krugman.html?_r=1&hp

[jaxx]

1. I hope Krugman is counting himself with the zombies

because he's become just a drone with his bitter denouncements. We can always wait until tomorrow when he walks it back like he does so many of his pieces. Really, he's just not there anymore.

[geckosfeet]

3. Ooh. Economic analysis. How un-zombielike.

I take it then, that you are fan of austerity measures for the peasants.

Excellent.

[geckosfeet]

2. Good read. But mods - there appears to be an army of zombie 'unreccers' onboard.

Read it: When Zombies Win

It's also worth pointing out that everything the right said about why Obamanomics would fail was wrong. For two years we've been warned that government borrowing would send interest rates sky-high; in fact, rates have fluctuated with optimism or pessimism about recovery, but stayed consistently low by historical standards. For two years we've been warned that inflation, even hyperinflation, was just around the corner; instead, disinflation has continued, with core inflation — which excludes volatile food and energy prices — now at a half-century low.

The free-market fundamentalists have been as wrong about events abroad as they have about events in America — and suffered equally few consequences. "Ireland," declared George Osborne in 2006, "stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking." Whoops. But Mr. Osborne is now Britain's top economic official.

And in his new position, he's setting out to emulate the austerity policies Ireland implemented after its bubble burst. After all, conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic spent much of the past year hailing Irish austerity as a resounding success. "The Irish approach worked in 1987-89 — and it's working now," declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute last June. Whoops, again.

But such failures don't seem to matter. To borrow the title of a recent book by the Australian economist John Quiggin on doctrines that the crisis should have killed but didn't, we're still — perhaps more than ever — ruled by "zombie economics." Why?

[Jim__]

4. The uber-rich are doing quite well under these policies.

And the uber-rich control our politics. Sure, these policies fail for working class Americans, but the media tell them it's the best chance they have - that 1 in a million chance that you'll become one of the rich.

[xchrom]

5. recommend

[mgc1961]

6. Krugman's correct.

The propagation of the evil big government continues despite proof that the fundamentalist's no government policy regularly fails to deliver the goods.

[BlueJac]

7. Krugman is right again as usual....n/t