Another Bad Story Bites The Dust
One of the remarkable things about the ongoing economic crisis is the endless search for explanations of something that’s actually quite simple — the sluggish pace of recovery. You have a large overhang of private debt; you have a still-depressed housing sector; and you have contractionary fiscal policy. Add to this the well-established fact that recovery tends to be slow after recessions caused not by tight money but by private-sector overreach, and there’s just no mystery that needs explaining.
Yet we’ve seen an endless series of analyses declaring that there is indeed a deep mystery, and it must be Obama’s Fault. Probably the most influential of these analyses was the claim that Obama was creating “uncertainty”, and this was holding everything back.
Larry Mishel did a thorough debunking of this meme almost two years ago. And sure enough, the index of uncertainty that everyone was pointing to has plunged, with no visible boost to the economy.
Will anyone who bought into this story engage in some serious self-analysis? Why am I even asking?
That last line is the dominant theme of our current dysfunction, and I'm trying hard not to think we can just slap some sense into people.
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