Paul Krugman, "Dwindling Deficit Disorder": The Sinking of the Titanic

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Dwindling Deficit Disorder" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/krugman-dwindling-deficit-disorder.html?_r=0), Paul Krugman concludes:

"The deficit is indeed dwindling, and the case for making the deficit a central policy concern, which was never very strong given low borrowing costs and high unemployment, has now completely vanished."

But what if unemployment remains high? As acknowledged by Krugman, "unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, is still unacceptably high." My guess is that high unemployment is with us to stay, given that US manufacturing has been allowed to fly the coop.

And what if borrowing rates go higher? They will need to be adjusted higher when there is a resurgence of inflation sometime over the next 28 years.

Why 28 years? Because as observed by Paul in an earlier op-ed (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/opinion/krugman-that-terrible-trillion.html?_r=0), the ratio of debt to G.D.P. is "the best measure of our debt position."

Well, US debt is currently some $16.7 trillion, which is more that 100% of America's G.D.P. Those "fools" at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently warned that "U.S. debt is on track to be nearly twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2037" (http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/230901-cbo-warns-of-grim-long-term-debt-outlook). Sure, in the meantime the American Taxpayer Relief Act and the sequester may have delayed "achievement" of that 200% debt to G.D.P. ratio by a few years; however, as acknowledged by the Peterson Foundation (http://www.pgpf.org/Issues/Fiscal-Outlook/2013/01/fiscal-cliff-atra-2012-long-term-analysis.aspx), we're still headed for that astronomical percentage by 2040.

Krugman warns of "scare tactics" and "a blizzard of bogus numbers" coming from those who oppose his calls for higher federal spending. "Bogus numbers" from the CBO? I don't think so. "Scare tactics"? Scared, me? The damage done and still to be done by the Obama administration is irreversible, and I am prepared to meet my maker.

Yes, the Titanic is going down as Krugman cries "All is well," and it will be for future generations to send deep-sea probes down into the cold murky water to conduct a proper postmortem.

Is Obama the Most Dysfunctional President in Contemporary American History?

Why listen to Jeffrey? He's just another a neocon. Sure, he favors gay marriage, is pro-choice, opposed the Second Gulf War, opposes US ground involvement in Afghanistan, and deplores the ravenous conduct of avaricious US financial institutions, but he has also dared to question the One. Jeffrey is "bad" and will never set foot in the White House.

Actually, the state of the union is bad. In fact, it is terrible owing to the arrogance of a president, who never possessed the skill set to be president.

The sequester? I don't know how many jobs will be lost or exactly what further damage will be done to a reeling economy. As observed by Charles Blow in his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Poison Pill Politics" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/opinion/blow-the-sequester-poison-pill-politics.html?_r=0):

"The deadline has passed. The sequester is in effect. And Congress is not in session.

We now know that our political system is broken beyond anything even remotely resembling a functional government.

The ridiculous bill was designed as a poison pill, but Republicans popped it like a Pez. Now the body politic — weak with battle fatigue, jerked from crisis to crisis and struggling to recover from a recession — has to wait to see how severe the damage will be."

But unlike Bob Woodward, Blows lacks the courage to acknowledge that the sequester was Obama's idea.

What about Woodward? What are the full implications of this imbroglio? As noted by Kathleen Parker in her latest Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Why the 'threat' on Bob Woodward matters" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kathleen-parker-the-obama-white-house-threat-to-bob-woodward-matters/2013/03/01/f5d36d5e-82b3-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_story.html?hpid=z2):

"This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike. Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger. And, thanks to technological advances in social media, Obama has been able to bypass traditional watchdogs as no other president has."

Yes, the First Amendment is under attack.

Obama's new cabinet of thick-witted white guys? They are indeed the worst and the dumbest. We have John Kerry, who called Bashar al-Assad his "dear friend" and who is given to inventing new countries (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/02/vice-president-joe-biden-just-fire.html), as secretary of state. We have Chuck Hagel, an anti-Semitic imbecile, as secretary of defense. And Jack Lew, the former chief operating officer of Citigroup’s Alternative Investments, who doesn't "believe that deregulation was the proximate cause" of the 2008 American economic meltdown (see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/21/obama-nominee-jacob-lew-f_n_732594.html?view=print&comm_ref=false), as secretary of the treasury.

Access to the president? An ambassadorship? All you need to do is pay money (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/politics/obamas-backers-seek-deep-pockets-to-press-agenda.html?pagewanted=all and http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/28/sources-obama-picks-for-ambassadorships-include-top-donors/?hpt=po_c2).

A rogue Iranian regime building nuclear weapons? The recent P5+1 talks in Kazakhstan brought no results, although the P5+1 is no longer demanding the closure of the underground Fordow facility. That Obama is one tough negotiator who knows how to bring those crazy mullahs to heel. Yeah, right.

Bottom line: I used to think that the cataclysm would come after my lifetime and that my children would be forced to deal with it. No more. Obama is literally bringing the house down.

Paul Krugman, "Ben Bernanke, Hippie": No Mention of the Bob Woodward Scandal

Read Paul Krugman's latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Ben Bernanke, Hippie" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/opinion/krugman-ben-bernanke-hippie.html?_r=0), which he concludes by observing:

"And an end to deficit obsession can’t come a moment too soon. Right now Washington is focused on the idiocy of the sequester, but this is only the latest episode in an unprecedented run of declines in public employment and government purchases that have crippled our economy’s recovery. A misguided elite consensus has led us into an economic quagmire, and it’s time for us to get out."

Now close your eyes, and tell me how many times does our Nobel prize winner mention President Obama, the originator of the sequester, in his opinion piece. Twice? Three times? Five times?

Answer . . . a drum roll please: Not once.

Krugman does comment on the foolishness of the second Iraq war by observing that those who "pointed out that the risks and likely costs of war were huge . . . were dismissed as ignorant and irresponsible."

Well, I opposed that war, because I believed that it would destroy the power equilibrium between Iraq and Iran. I have also opposed America's prolonged ground involvement in Afghanistan, which was foolishly escalated by Obama and is costing the US $6 billion per month, but there is no mention by Krugman of that boondoggle.

The bulk of Krugman's opinion piece is devoted to his obsessive opposition to "austerity." However, there is no attempt by Krugman to distinguish between austerity and foolhardy federal spending.

As noted by Charles Krauthammer today in a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Hail Armageddon" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-hail-armageddon/2013/02/28/ca8a32a6-81da-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_story.html):

"A 2011 Government Accountability Office report gave a sampling of the vastness of what could be cut, consolidated and rationalized in Washington: 44 overlapping job training programs, 18 for nutrition assistance, 82 (!) on teacher quality, 56 dealing with financial literacy, more than 20 for homelessness, etc. Total annual cost: $100 billion-$200 billion, about two to five times the entire domestic sequester."

But Krauthammer is nefarious neocon, and there is nothing to be learned from him.

What else isn't being mentioned by Krugman? There's also the small matter of how the Imperial Second Term Obama Administration is seeking to silence Bob Woodward for daring to remind Americans that the sequester was Obama's dumb idea. As stated by Woodward during an interview by Sean Hannity (I know, another neocon whose show you should never be caught watching) on Thursday night (see: http://freebeacon.com/woodward-discusses-sequester-coverage-w-h-doesnt-want-to-be-crossed/):

Hannity: "Why should it matter if the president suggested the sequestration, and then the president denied that he requested the sequestration, and the president had a deal that he wasn't going to ask for tax increases, and then later does and says that's not true, and they attack you as, well, being willfully wrong? Why should this matter? I mean, don't we deserve our government to be honest with us?

Woodward: "Exactly. And I'm almost 70-years-old, I hate to acknowledge. I've done this for four decades. I will keep doing it in some form. But the White House saying you're doing these things when you've worked months on it and you have the documents, and Jay Carney actually acknowledges paternity for the sequester from the White House. The problem is there are all kinds of reporters who are much less experienced, who are younger, and if they are going to get roughed up in this way. And I am flooded with e-mails from people in the press saying this is exactly the way the White House works. They are trying to control, and they don't want to be challenged or crossed."

Well, Bob Woodward is not a neocon, and although his credibility and motivation are now being questioned by others in the media, doesn't he deserve a minute of our attention, particularly if he is warning that the Obama administration is trying to control America's news media?

Query: Is it even possible that Obama is trying to "control" the news media? Absolutely, and we have the answer from none other than former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. Listen to Dunn lecture on Obama’s media tactics during the 2008 election (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGNhAnwp_Y):

"One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters. We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it. . . . very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control."

Obama is seeking "control" over the media? Actually, as acknowledged by Dunn, he has been seeking "absolute control."

Yes, it is frightening, and it's pitiful to see that Krugman, an economist and also a journalist, doesn't have the backbone to relate to the Woodward scandal.

Paul Krugman, "Sequester of Fools": Anus Horribilis

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Sequester of Fools" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/opinion/krugman-sequester-of-fools.html), Paul Krugman rails against the sequester. Krugman writes:

"Messrs. Bowles and Simpson had their moment — the annus horribilis of 2011, when Washington was in thrall to deficit scolds insisting that, in the face of record-high long-term unemployment and record-low borrowing costs, we forget about jobs and concentrate exclusively on a 'grand bargain' that would supposedly (not actually) settle budget disputes for ever after.

That moment has now passed; even Mr. Bowles concedes that the search for a grand bargain is on 'life support.' Let’s convene a death panel! But the legacy of that year of living foolishly lives on, in the form of the 'sequester,' one of the worst policy ideas in our nation’s history.

. . . .

The good news is that compared with our last two self-inflicted crises, the sequester is relatively small potatoes. A failure to raise the debt ceiling would have threatened chaos in world financial markets; failure to reach a deal on the so-called fiscal cliff would have led to so much sudden austerity that we might well have plunged back into recession. The sequester, by contrast, will probably cost 'only' around 700,000 jobs."

I agree, the United States, under the able stewardship of President Obama, is again steering for an economic iceberg, and even Krugman acknowledges in this instance, with regard to the sequester, that "Republicans and Democrats alike signed on to this idea."

But just a moment. What is this talk about the fiscal cliff taking the US "back into recession"? Excuse me, did I miss something over the past few days? Wasn't it Krugman who, in an op-ed entitled "Rubio and the Zombies" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/02/paul-krugman-rubio-and-zombies.html), just informed us that America is "more than five years into the worst economic slump since the Great Depression"? Apparently the Nobelist from the Times is suddenly aware of something that I don't know.