Comments for Joe Scarborough's Attack on Stimulus at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 14 out of 14 comments http://www.cepr.net Sun, 26 May 2013 02:02:54 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21688 I'm a devoted reader, Dr. Baker, and a fan of your straight, blunt approach. But let me pick a bone with regard to this post: You say, "President Obama and his team deserve lots of criticism for failing to recognize the severity of the downturn." I ask: If the CBO and the BEA both miscalculated the severity of the recession, how was the Obama Administration supposed to get it right? Moreover, it wasn't until 2011 until the BEA computed the actual decline in the economy and discovered in was more than twice what its original estimate was, right? And that original estimate is what Obama's economic team was working with, right? Also, while it's fair to say, as you do, that eventually Obama's team should have acknowledged that the stimulus bill was inadequate, how would that have changed anything, other than, to perhaps, frighten consumers and businesses into withholding their spending even more? The fact was, congressional Republicans were never, ever going to vote for more stimulus spending. And many congressional Democrats were not going to, either, since (a) "stimulus" had been turned into a four-letter word meaning bull excrement, (b) virtually all Americans (and Brits, among others) were conflating macroeconomics with household economics (the only framework they knew), and (c) Austrians, austerians, and freshwater economists were mounting an all-out offensive. It's all hypothetical, I know, but, given congressional Democrats' aversion to the T-word at the beginning of 2009 and the Republicans' tactic of employing the filibuster to accomplish their strategy of denying Obama a second terms . . . given these factors, I know of no plausible story that could be told now that would have altered the history that actually unfolded. - Fred Brack Sat, 02 Feb 2013 13:16:11 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21678 Joe's predecessor was Don Imus until Don made his unfortunate comments. Imus ran essentially a one person show for many years and was the real thing. He was a good listener. Paul Krugman would have gotten a much better hearing with Don and questions would have been more incisive and helpful. It just would have been a much, much more educational experience. Now I find that the show with its weak host and hostess has devolved, and the management knows this, and therefore have made it a collaboration with many rotating co-hosts/guests that are necessary to keep things going. When Mitka's father several years ago told Joe that he "could not be stunningly superficial" about mid-east events, this remark could have been generalized to everything. - Richard Sat, 02 Feb 2013 05:41:51 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21664 The problems was entirely political, in that the GOP was and still is wedded to the 'tax cuts pay for themselves' concept. Throw in the second political GOP decision, that the new President must be made to fail, and you get what we all got: Inadequate stimulus that depended primarily along the tax cut line of thinking and ignored the direct hiring type of fiscal stimulus. The result has been higher unemployment and higher deficits. We could still move forward a lot faster if Congress decided to put people to work in large infrastructure projects, like installing a national smart transmission grid among other badly needed improvements, but the same political GOP calculus remains and thus nothing substantive is done. As for Scarborough, he's a Republican and accepts his party's economic theories without question. That's not going to change. It can only be hoped that voters will finish in 2014 at the ballot box what they began in 2012: A demand their government act on their behalf and help create employment. - Chris Herbert Sat, 02 Feb 2013 00:03:11 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21662 @ sherparick I like your theory about Captain Kangaroo! ha ha ha :D @ jumpinjezebel There's a common belief that there were those who wanted the stimulus to be small enough to be little effective, for political reasons. And the way some are grasping at straws it certainly seems they're disappointed that it was as effective as it was. - watermelonpunch Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:05:21 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21661 Didn't Romer's staff estimate, in early 2009, that we needed a stimulus about twice what Larry Summers recommended as a high-estimate to Obama? And nearly three times what Obama got? As I recall, Summers provided no good economic reason for rejecting Romer's estimate, but he made a political judgment that such a big number would not sell in Congress and chose not to include Romer's findings in his memo to Obama. In addition, the stimulus was badly skewed to tax cuts rather than job creation, and many economists realized this mistake at the time. Again, the cause was the strong GOP political preference for tax cuts rather than government programs. - PJR Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:12:02 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21655 A must read for Joe Scarborough: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/the-human-disaster-of-unemployment.html?_r=2&ref=opinion& - Union Member Fri, 01 Feb 2013 10:00:41 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21654 In order to get ANYTHING passed by the House and Senate (and some of the Dunces) the SIZE and CONTENT of it had to be severely compromised. that's why it was so small in limited in it's effectiveness. Of course those "Shovel Ready Jobs" BS didn't help any either - but one can only preach so much to the bureaucrats so far down in the organizations to do the right thing. - jumpinjezebel Fri, 01 Feb 2013 09:47:17 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21650 Cuts in public investment and consumption have been a drag on GDP growth for 11 of the last 12 quarters. Govt employment has fallen by over 600,000 since the start of the recession. After adjusting for inflation, federal spending in FY 2012 is 200 billion lower than FY 2009. It's obvious from these simple numbers the stimulus was not nearly big enough. - joe Fri, 01 Feb 2013 07:34:32 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21648 You have to remember the competition. Compared with "Fox and Friends" (the highest rated show), Joe's show is an oasis of enlightenment. And for some reason, CNN has gotten the hang of morning show techniques going back to the first "Today" shows. (In some ways they seem to fascinated by CBS's 40 years of failure in morning shows and to repeat them(I believe CBS has been properly cursed by the TV gods for the way it moved around and eventually cancelled "Captain Kangaroo" in the 1970s and early 80s. - sherparick Fri, 01 Feb 2013 06:05:21 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21647 I'm no expert on economics nor a math whiz, and I could tell, at the time, that the stimulus that was passed seemed rather a pittance compared to the enormity of the situation. Maybe I'm crackers, but it really seems to be a case of willful ignorance by people completely out of touch with what's been going on. I'm reminded of a story from many years ago where some people from my area (NE PA), were sued in another part of the country because they were driving along somewhere towing a camper of some type, and somehow completely unaware that something was dragging and throwing off sparks that actually started a serious forest fire. I see politicians and those who are supposed to inform them, standing around saying, "Well I'm not on fire, what's the problem here?" At this point, I'm despairingly convinced that the people "in charge" of things will remain willfully ignorant unless & until they start feeling the heat themselves. Until then, it's just easy to blame the victims. - watermelonpunch Fri, 01 Feb 2013 05:40:30 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21646 Chris: Why does MSNBC keep an laughable ignoramus like Scarborough? Because the network corrupt. A better question might be: Why do we keep buying the products advertised on Morning Joe? - Roger Fri, 01 Feb 2013 04:44:33 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21645 Because Joe knows next to nothing about economics and is just not terribly bright in general. Why MSNBC keeps him I don't know. - Chris Fri, 01 Feb 2013 04:33:29 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21643 Methinks it more persuasive to note that 1.7 is nearly 50% of 3.8 (for people who are not fans of arithmetic), which is one heck of an underestimate. - David Fri, 01 Feb 2013 03:52:32 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/joe-scarboroughs-attack-on-stimulus#comment-21642 [quote]Why would Joe Scarborough or anyone else be surprised to see that it didn't?[/quote] Because Joe Scarborough's fear of uncertainty and its effect on the economy is so damaging, Scarborough would have you believe not only can he predict the downturn with perfect certainty, he can also predict with perfect certainty that any fiscal stimulus of any size cannot produce a single net new job. - Last Mover Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:22:47 +0100