50 shades of wrong, by @DavidOAtkins

50 shades of wrong

by David Atkins

Remember back when the weak August jobs report was supposed to be the death knell of the Obama campaign? It turns out that, as many intelligent people noted at the time but were drowned out by many on both the right and the left, those numbers had yet to be revised. And it turns out that those figured underestimated actual job growth by about 400,000 jobs.

Here what John Boehner had said at the time, wrongly attempting to capitalize on incomplete data:

We need a president and a Senate with the courage to let go of the failed ‘stimulus’-style policies of the past and work with Republicans on proven pro-growth measures to tackle our debt, address high prices, and create a better environment for jobs.
A beautifully performed, poll-tested pile of meaningless gobbledygook. Also, wrong.

And Mitt Romney, arguing that the Fed could no longer do anything to help the economy:

“What we really need is to have policies coming from Washington that are fiscally sound and that get America back on track to having the kind of financial stability and foundation of economic growth that puts people to work.”
Is there a universe in which a statement like this can be taken seriously by reasonable people?

There isn't a single economist or politician who can make a persuasive case for why that statement makes any sense. Yet such things are continually said by economists and conservative politicians as an almost religious mantra.

The national debt isn't hurting the American economy at all. Unemployment and low economic demand is. If corporations aren't investing in American jobs, it's because there is no reason for them to. If there's an uncertainty problem, it has much more to do with the stupidly imposed "fiscal cliff" than anything having to do with U.S. debt.

That's not to say that debt can't become a problem. It can become a problem if debt drives up borrowing costs. But it hasn't done that by a long shot. Treasury bonds are still incredibly cheap. Debt can become a problem if paying down the interest on the debt starts to squeeze out spending on needed programs. But we aren't there yet, either. And that itself is only a problem if there is danger of printing more currency leading to an inflation crisis--which as Paul Krugman incessantly notes is a baseless worry at this time. Besides, if the debt is a real concern, by far the easiest and best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work while leveling the tax playing field, as the People's Budget does. Ending needless overseas wars and Pentagon spending would help as well.

Destroying the safety net and enacting austerity policies, on the other hand, will do nothing but increase economic pain, while shrinking the economy and increasing the debt--for whatever that's worth.

So there were Mitt Romney and John Boehner, sitting there in early August shortly after the Democratic National Convention, spewing wrong nonsense about jobs numbers that had yet to be revised, arguing for bizarrely wrong economic policies based on bizarrely wrong economic assumptions.

The press has actually done a good job this year of calling out the Romney campaign and its allies for their lies and its ineptitude. But it would be nice if the press, especially the oh-so-serious economic and financial press, would also point out just how many prismatic variations on wrong they are as well. Of course, it would also help if the President and the neoliberals didn't buy into so many of those wrongheaded assumptions on their own account.


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