AMERICAblog: "The current crisis is, indeed, like the Great Depression in important ways"
martha
· 1 year ago
Why isnt everyone blaming the idiot BUSH? He is the cause of all this. We did NOT have to destory the economy, or fight ilegal stupid, immoral wars. 9/11 didn't have to happen and noone should have died in Iraq.
Malibu Barbie
· 1 year ago
Yes indeed, we can't sell our debt, we can't raise interest rates, all we can do is print money to the tune of trillions of dollars. Thanks Dubya, thanks Republicans, you wrecked the economy and brought the U.S. financial sector down to the level of a third world nation.
But our debt STILL is not as bad as the UK, Switzerland or Ireland. Small comfort there.
Malibu Barbie
· 1 year ago
Oopsie, got that wrong. The criteria of admission to the Euro currency is that a country's debt does not exceed 60% of that country's GDP. We wouldn't qualify.
Steve_in_CNJ
· 1 year ago
thanks for the correction. US debt is 77% of GDP.
Deacon_Blues
· 1 year ago
Meanwhile the Prick-in-Chief blathers on, speechifies to captive soldier audiences (hoping to somehow capture the glory from them he eschewed when he had the chance), is ignored by other heads of state, is eclipsed by the young, intelligent senator that will succeed him, and cements his place in history as the 21st century Herbert Hoover.
citizen spot
· 1 year ago
Jeez, now maybe the brain trust at Stanford's Hoover Institute will rethink welcoming Rumsfeld as a "visiting fellow"/war criminal.
Roddy McCorley
· 1 year ago
Only those who learn from history can hope to avoid repeating it.
A bit late for that, I think. We're in this mess precisely because our "conservative" friends were unable to learn from history. FDR and the New Dealers put a series of programs, agencies and regulations in place expressly to prevent - or at least cushion - the sort of catastrophic economic failure we are seeing now. Those safeguards have been systematically dismantled over the last 28 years. The results were entirely predictable - you don't even have to be an economist.
KarenMrsLloydRichards
· 1 year ago
Ya see, we don't need to learn from history. We create our own reality. We do what our gut tells us is right.
jprfrog
· 1 year ago
Let's not panic prematurely, shall we?
Malibu Barbie
· 1 year ago
Oh, let's do. Pretty please?
ProgressiveTroll
· 1 year ago
I've been freaking for several years now, didn't need Krugman to see what was coming. I've been warning people for years to stock up and buy gold, that it was going to be a rough ride. And it isn't over yet. Until we bring back jobs with wages to keep the economy afloat, we are going to be in dire straits.
Chris From Maine
· 1 year ago
and the only thing that ended the depression finally was the biggest and worst war in American history.
quite a lot to put on Obama's shoulders.. I pity him.
oh, and things are going to get a lot worse according to most experts.
Indigo
· 1 year ago
Invoking Santayana, "Only those who learn from history can hope to avoid repeating it" doesn't quite fly for two reasons. One, Krugman plagiarized the thought without attribution and two, we already didn't learn and have already repeated the mistakes.
We are not in an oh-my-goodness-we're-headed-into-another-great-depression scenario. Kreugman is being disingenous. We are already in a (still veiled) Depression. All we know now is that we did not learn the lesson and exactly what Santayana (not Krugman) predicted is happening.
Dear Professor Krugman, cut the crap. Focus on the problem and prove you deserved the Nobel prize by showing concretely how to get out of this crisis. Thanks.
jebauer
· 1 year ago
Yeah, I hadn't seen this article before I watched the news this evening. Half way through the broadcast I looked at my husband and said, we are in a depression, this is no recession. Granted, I'm proudly a glass empty kind of girl, but I tend to be right on big picture things for some bizarre instinctual reason. This is a depression.
anarchy
· 1 year ago
"I know it's hard to put food on your family"
what great modern idiot said this?
SoBay Brian
· 1 year ago
Okay - off topic - but I need HELP!!!! My mother in law is staying with us for Thanksgiving and apparently she's been watching - and believing - Fox News. WTF do I do with someone who really believes Obama's just a few clicks away from being the anti-christ? When I point out the "Fox" and "News" are polar opposites she gets all defensive and implies that she's a super-strong feminist because she supported Palin. Where are those Marlin Perkin's Wild Animal Kingdom tranquilizer dart guns when you need 'em?
UncleGlenny
· 1 year ago
Can you slip some hypnotics in her drinks and make her watch a few weeks of Countdown?
Eric
· 1 year ago
What's your perceived antidote? MSNBC? The Daily Show? I get just as bored and headachey watching Keith Olbermann as I do watching Bill O'Reilly.
Obama ain't perfect. In the Senate, he voted for all of the spending that Bush wanted in his worthless Iraq war. That's your antiwar candidate.
eamon
· 1 year ago
I am dumbstruck that our national debt is 77% of GDP. I am also dumbstruck that some 80% of our GDP is derived from consumer spending. Those numbers are mind-boggling. From that I would infer that the consumer is the driving force of the economy. This makes my head rattle.
Asterix
· 1 year ago
I've long maintained that the subprime fiasco isn't going to be the coup de grace for the American economy As We Know It. It's going to be massive credit-card default that will cause the whole mess to go kablooey.
For the first time in memory, I'm really scared of the possibility of the total failure of our financial system.
Bob Campbell
· 1 year ago
"Now, if all goes well the Obama stimulus plan will head off the worst. But that will be precisely because we understood that the current crisis is, indeed, like the Great Depression in important ways. Only those who learn from history can hope to avoid repeating it."
Now this is a crock of crap.. we are not in a Depression. We have 1.2 million out of work.. we have very little inflation.. interest rates are next to nothing.. at the end of Carter's years we had 10 million out of work, 12.5% inflation, and 23% interest rates.. that was a REAL recession.
FDR created a New Deal with huge government spending programs but he certainly didn't stall the Depression. Obama's STIMULUS PACKAGE will simply make things worse like the New Deal. The War ending with returning Vets, the emergence of domestic productivity (as opposed to war projects), and big consumer spending is what got us out of the Depression. A Depression is a "state of mind." The Democrats are famous for messing with the mind and giving the "woe is me speech" so they can buy votes and create a "dependent" state.
Cut the damn taxes, especially Capital Gains.. get rid of heaving deficit spending.. let the "dead wood" Banks and Auto companies fail and start over.. the Stock Market will happily respond and consumer confidence will return very quickly.. that is all it takes..
When you quote history Mr. Professor you should do a better job that this article.
PS.. you really want to make the Fed accountable and get rid of the big credit/deficit problem.. get back on the Gold standard.. that will stop the liberals and government spenders dead in their tracks..
Malibu Barbie
· 1 year ago
The last numbers from the US Government:
"The unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 6.5 percent in October, and the number of unemployed persons increased by 603,000 to 10.1 million. "
and today the US Government announced unemployment claims hit a 25-year high. The unemployment trend is shooting straight up.
I hope the Republicans spend all their airtime cementing their reputation as the Herbert Hoover party. Those who can't learn from reality are doomed to lose elections.
Eric
· 1 year ago
I'm sad that it'll take the fiscal destruction of our country to prove that Keynes and Krugman belong in the ash heap of failed economic dogma. For chrissakes, they actually think that saving money in the bank is BAD for the economy?!
They say the reason that these bailouts haven't worked is because they weren't LARGE enough?! Who the fuck put these crazy idiots in charge? Bernanke and Paulson shouldn't be allowed to have money, much less control its supply.
We have little production in this country and we have no savings to start production. These bailouts are just shoving money around from the successful to the losers and we'll all lose as a result. Banks use this money to pay their debts, not to loan to entrepreneurs to start businesses.
Congress is powerless because they cowardly gave away all of their powers that mattered long before any of us were born.
All Comments
But our debt STILL is not as bad as the UK, Switzerland or Ireland. Small comfort there.
A bit late for that, I think. We're in this mess precisely because our "conservative" friends were unable to learn from history. FDR and the New Dealers put a series of programs, agencies and regulations in place expressly to prevent - or at least cushion - the sort of catastrophic economic failure we are seeing now. Those safeguards have been systematically dismantled over the last 28 years. The results were entirely predictable - you don't even have to be an economist.
quite a lot to put on Obama's shoulders.. I pity him.
oh, and things are going to get a lot worse according to most experts.
We are not in an oh-my-goodness-we're-headed-into-another-great-depression scenario. Kreugman is being disingenous. We are already in a (still veiled) Depression. All we know now is that we did not learn the lesson and exactly what Santayana (not Krugman) predicted is happening.
Dear Professor Krugman, cut the crap. Focus on the problem and prove you deserved the Nobel prize by showing concretely how to get out of this crisis. Thanks.
what great modern idiot said this?
My mother in law is staying with us for Thanksgiving and apparently she's been watching - and believing - Fox News.
WTF do I do with someone who really believes Obama's just a few clicks away from being the anti-christ?
When I point out the "Fox" and "News" are polar opposites she gets all defensive and implies that she's a super-strong feminist because she supported Palin.
Where are those Marlin Perkin's Wild Animal Kingdom tranquilizer dart guns when you need 'em?
Obama ain't perfect. In the Senate, he voted for all of the spending that Bush wanted in his worthless Iraq war. That's your antiwar candidate.
Joe Nocera seems to agree:
http://executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11...
For the first time in memory, I'm really scared of the possibility of the total failure of our financial system.
Now this is a crock of crap.. we are not in a Depression. We have 1.2 million out of work.. we have very little inflation.. interest rates are next to nothing.. at the end of Carter's years we had 10 million out of work, 12.5% inflation, and 23% interest rates.. that was a REAL recession.
FDR created a New Deal with huge government spending programs but he certainly didn't stall the Depression. Obama's STIMULUS PACKAGE will simply make things worse like the New Deal. The War ending with returning Vets, the emergence of domestic productivity (as opposed to war projects), and big consumer spending is what got us out of the Depression. A Depression is a "state of mind." The Democrats are famous for messing with the mind and giving the "woe is me speech" so they can buy votes and create a "dependent" state.
Cut the damn taxes, especially Capital Gains.. get rid of heaving deficit spending.. let the "dead wood" Banks and Auto companies fail and start over.. the Stock Market will happily respond and consumer confidence will return very quickly.. that is all it takes..
When you quote history Mr. Professor you should do a better job that this article.
PS.. you really want to make the Fed accountable and get rid of the big credit/deficit problem.. get back on the Gold standard.. that will stop the liberals and government spenders dead in their tracks..
"The unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 6.5 percent in October, and the number of unemployed persons increased by 603,000 to 10.1 million. "
and today the US Government announced unemployment claims hit a 25-year high. The unemployment trend is shooting straight up.
I hope the Republicans spend all their airtime cementing their reputation as the Herbert Hoover party. Those who can't learn from reality are doomed to lose elections.
They say the reason that these bailouts haven't worked is because they weren't LARGE enough?! Who the fuck put these crazy idiots in charge? Bernanke and Paulson shouldn't be allowed to have money, much less control its supply.
We have little production in this country and we have no savings to start production. These bailouts are just shoving money around from the successful to the losers and we'll all lose as a result. Banks use this money to pay their debts, not to loan to entrepreneurs to start businesses.
Congress is powerless because they cowardly gave away all of their powers that mattered long before any of us were born.