Obama’s Economist: We Didn’t Understand The Recession
Gee, you think?
Dana Milbank writes about a meeting between Romer and the press in which she admits the obvious:
She had no idea how bad the economic collapse would be. She still doesn’t understand exactly why it was so bad. The response to the collapse was inadequate. And she doesn’t have much of an idea about how to fix things.
What she did have was a binder full of scary descriptions and warnings, offered with a perma-smile and singsong delivery: “Terrible recession. . . . Incredibly searing. . . . Dramatically below trend. . . . Suffering terribly. . . . Risk of making high unemployment permanent. . . . Economic nightmare.”
Anybody want dessert?
Ed Morrissey adds:
Just how bad was it? Romer admitted that no one at the White House understood the fundamentals of this recession, and how they just assumed it would behave like previous recessions. And it might have done so, had the Obama administration applied the policies that alleviated previous recessions, especially those that Ronald Reagan used to pull the US out of a decade-long stagnation slump where high inflation eroded the buying power of Americans.
Romer and other Obama administration officials are carrying on as if the cause of the continued recession were a mystery. But it’s no mystery. It’s just that the government cannot stimulate the economy, because the government can’t spend anything without first taking it away from someone else.
This is, apparently, a mystery to the Obama administration. Truth be told, if Obama had come into office and done nothing we’d be better off economically than we are now.
Tags: Barack Obama, christine romer, dana milbank, Economy, jobs
