Paul Krugman: 2009 And All That: Noted for August 22, 2013
Paul Krugman: 2009 And All That:
It is overwhelmingly clear that, as some of us warned at the time, the stimulus was too small and too short-lived. We can argue until we’re blue in the face whether the WH could have gotten a bigger stimulus, or at least built into its plans a mechanism to get additional stimulus down the road… via reconciliation… driven a harder bargain with the banks…. What is clear… is that the inner circle badly misjudged the scale of the problem…. Oh, and Yellen was right when they were wrong. So how has 2009 become the administration’s economic Camelot, the golden age--in their own minds--when they achieved miracles, so that anyone who wasn’t there is considered second-class?… Cardiff Garcia mocks the WH position as being that they want a pushover who would be fun to have a beer with during a crisis--and there’s enough truth there to make it sting. All in all, this whole episode is not making anyone think better of Obama’s judgment.
