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Paul Krugman: "The case the president finally began to make in Cleveland this week - is that if Republicans regain power, things will indeed be worse."

Portrait, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, 06/15/09. (photo: Fred R. Conrad/NYT)

Things Could Be Worse

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

10 September 10

"Japan's problems now are the same as they were in the 1990s, when you were writing about them. It's depressing." So declared one economist I spoke to here. "But the Japanese don't seem all that depressed," objected another. Both were right - and the conversation crystallized some thoughts I've been having about Japan's situation, and ours.

A decade ago, Japan was a byword for failed economic policies: years after its real estate bubble burst, it was still suffering from chronic deflation and slow growth. Then America had its own bubble, bust and crisis. And these days, Japan's record doesn't look that bad to an American eye.

Why not? For all its flaws, Japanese policy limited and contained the damage from a financial bust. And the question in America now is whether we'll do the same - or whether we will take a hard right turn into economic disaster.

Comments

+15 # Guest 2010-09-10 10:43

If the wrong-wing party regains control of Congress it also will mean worse political fighting/gridlock and further shrinking of the middle class. Corporate-funded Neo-con think tanks are probably already planning on new issues to attack Obama/Dems and Speaker Boner will be lining up investigators and special prosecutors to hound the president (a la the Clinton days) and kill any real jobs programs. Remember, Rush wanted Obama to fail.

+6 # Guest 2010-09-10 11:10

Dear Paul: As always you make sense. I suppose the thoughtful elite find Keynes in what you say. Beyond Keynes, I just find Hamilton. Like Aristotle, Hamilton thought government was there to do the public good. He frequently championed the altogether unremarkable proposition that you cannot provide necessary public services unless you are willing to fund them--either with money on hand, or with iou's. Absolutely, our nation needs now that more robust stimulus you keep writing about. What I find you blinking on is the really disgusting and irrational way that Obama, Geithner, and Summers have "pissed in their own punch bowl." The Democrat buy-in to what was essentially the Paulson plan--no enforceable conditions put on pouring out public money into the coffers of the most predatory financial institutions this nation has seen--spoiled the party before it could get well under way. Did the Japanese do that? I doubt it. But I think you know Club-Obama did. Start telling the people.

+9 # Guest 2010-09-10 12:54

I really hate thinking that maybe things have to get worse before they will ever get better. Like a junkie that needs to completely hit bottom before real recovery is possible, it just seems to me like the American public needs to suffer the consequences of the historically disastrous economic policies our government has created starting with Raygun. The economic class war that the elites have been engaging in since Reagan needs to culminate in the total pauperization of the people in order that the people wake up and realize that the elites, to the last man, woman and child, are vastly more expendable in the extreme, than the rest of us are. We seem so determined in our race to a bottom that this will necessitate all out civil war to correct. For all the horror that such would bring, isn't it an inevitability? The unrelenting erosion of everything that makes life worth living in this nation has to culminate in desperation eventually. The scent of revolution is starting to grow.

+8 # Guest 2010-09-10 16:02

How many understand the catastrophe if the Republicans take control again....with George Bush ideas back in play?

ARE THEY COMPLETELY BLIND TO THE CALAMITY OF THEIR ACTIONS?

Probably...if their deathwish is actually THAT!

NOVEMBER!

NOVEMBER

NOVEMBER

REMEMBER

+8 # Guest 2010-09-10 20:54

I find it sad, and ironic that we have to pump up the Liberals, Democrats, Progressives and those in the middle, considering the recent history of the HORRIBLE 8 years of the Bush Administration, and all those Gingrich years of horror. What the wing-nuts CON-servatives have done to undermine ANY progress during President Obama's two years should make you raging mad to VOTE MORE DEMOCRATS in Congress and fight with all your might NOT to allow a Rethug redux. Don't fall for the machinery at play to be discouraged that the Dems didn't get enough done, THEY GOT LOTS DONE without any help from RE-RE-RE-RETHUGS. Thank you for voting!

+1 # Guest 2010-09-11 06:00

H-D-w: I appreciate what you're saying. Here in California come November, I will certainly vote for Barbara Boxer and for Jerry Brown--both Democrats. Barbara believes it is better for children to be in schools than to be left to wander the streets. So do I. She also likes fire- departments, and I do too. She and I share the notion that we will not clean up crime-in-the-streets by clearing the streets of policemen. And the same is true of Jerry Brown--running now to return to being our governor. But I have extremely negative feelings about Barack Obama. I find it unacceptable that he is acting in such a way as to enable our CIA to continue to violate international law, and to trample on human rights. I want him impeached. He is a disgrace to the office. He sullies the name of every America, and he puts our children and grandchildren in unnecessary jeopardy.

+6 # Guest 2010-09-11 05:58

If our country by their votes in November of 2010, let the Republicans take control of Congress again, then we no one to blame but ourselves. If the GOP in the forms of Boehner of Ohio, in the House, and McConnell of Kentucky in the Senate become the Majority Leaders, look for Social Security Benefits to get cut, Medicare to maybe wither away, and other programs like our newly elected Health Insurance Plan (Even though it is somewhat flawed, It still is a plus) all get downsized and maybe even cut out. The voters in our country, no matter whether they are Democrats, Republicans, Tea Party, Independent, etc, have to remember that Newt Gingrich the possible
head of all this hoopla was the Speaker of the House, and his Contract for American downsized the Government so much, that all business that the US Govt was doing was shut down. And then guess what??? Forget your Social Security checks, forget your Medicare coverage and any other program that helps the poor.. What a mess we are in...

+2 # Guest 2010-09-11 09:24

I hear ya' Anthony, but let's say the Dems don't lose in November. What then? Just because things could get worse if we don't vote Democratic, it just doesn't seem that things will actually get better if we do.

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