What wasn’t considered?

During the initial discussion of the stimulus, the debate was framed almost entirely as a debate between Obama and those who said the stimulus was too big; the voices of those saying it was too small were largely frozen out. And they still are…

Yes, Krugman is a member of the Keynesian School of Economic Magick With a ‘K.’ This school of thought believes that government spending is imbued with special pOWerZ to make consumers & producers suddenly realize, “Wow, if the government is spending gobs of money, then everything’s going to be A-OK.” Sadly, such economics only work in places like Pleasantville. In full-color reality, government spending only changes who gets to decide where the wealth is spent – and that would be the politicians, of course, who Always Know Better That You.

So then, here’s the kicker:

the voices calling for stronger stimulus are, may I say, sorta kinda respectable — several Nobelists in the bunch, plus a large fraction of the prominent economists who predicted the housing crash before it happened.

Having a Nobel prize doesn’t mean squat if you’re pushing asinine ideas.

< Pause briefly to consider Nobel prize winners Climate Change Preacher Al Gore and Terrorist Yasser Afarat. >

Also, it doesn’t take a “prominent economist” to know when a housing crash is coming – a rhudimentary understanding of economics can easily provide such a prediction. It was pretty obvious to me (not an economist) a housing crash was coming – the frantic pace of growth was unsustainable, especially combined with free-wheeling credit.

But somehow, the pro-stimulus people are unpersons. Who makes these decisions?

Who? Thankfully, not Waaah-Nobody-Listens-To-My-Bad-Ideas-But-They-Should-Because-I-Have-a-Nobel-Prize Krugman.

I think I ought to say something about the torture memos — namely, that there is now no way to view the people who ruled us these past 8 years as anything but monsters.

We had all these rationalizations of torture over the “ticking clock” and all that — then we learn, for example, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month. I really don’t even want to think about all this. But this was our government — and these people might be back.