Help is on the way... sorta...

By Owen Paine on Saturday September 25, 2010 11:20 AM

Our next econ-con czar a czarina? My pick, Laura Tyson, who recently wrote:

"OUR national debate about fiscal policy has become skewed, with far too much focus on the deficit and far too little on unemployment.... By focusing on the wrong things, we are in serious danger of failing to do the right things to help the economy recover from its worst labor market crisis since the Great Depression...The primary cause of the labor market crisis is a collapse in private demand..."
Notice the use of labor market here, not product markets; and she goes on further:
"Clearly, the pace of recovery is far slower than what is needed to restore the millions of jobs that have been lost... by next year, the stimulus will end, and the flip from fiscal support to fiscal contraction could shave one to two percentage points off the growth rate at a time when the unemployment rate is still well above 9 percent. Under these circumstances, the economic case for additional government spending and tax relief is compelling..."
If she had stopped there and given us a stimpak II number of a trillion dollars, I'd say, right on sister. But of course she she doesn't. In fact what she says has no numbers attached and it's full of the usual stuff about unemployment benefits, school teachers, and bullet trains. Lines like this aren't very helpful:
" The federal government should pledge generous financing increases for [unemployment benefits and aid to state governments(*)] through 2011.."
She sez we can afford "additional spending" but then she ends with the usual neo-lib split decision:
"As long as the economy is operating far below potential, policy makers should do two seemingly contradictory things. First, they should provide additional fiscal support for job creation and growth. And, second, they should enact a credible multiyear plan now to stabilize the ratio of federal debt to gross domestic product gradually as the economy recovers."
Not much, really, but it might be the best we get. Of course according to my latest top advisor at 'Paine Quantitative', THEY'RE ALL EVIL -- every last one of 'em -- so what can we expect?

-------------------

(*) "Aid to state governments"?!?! Yuck! -- The Editor

Comments (22)

Al Schumann:

They are all evil. They lack the full evil courage of their evil convictions, but that's more a character flaw than a mark in their favor. Basically what you have with them is a gaggle of self-involved cretins, whose personalities are so rotten that a couple of hours with them could turn a Quaker meeting into a lynch mob.

FB:

My pick is Carly Fiorina

op:

Al i must confess this snap of her melts
my econ con rigor
if that makes physical sense

she might never really have the expression this stop time shot seems to suggest
but if she does
i'll be her thrall thru it all

fb

oh you grump

btw carly needs me to redesign her look

she needs more this

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/files/2009/07/quest-dominatrix.jpg

okay she has an age problem
but i have resources
not just accessories

we can re make her
build her up
with my teams help
she can be
faster stronger
...crueler

I'm totally down with Fadduh Smiff on State governments. As batshit as Federal/national politicians are these days, State-level politicians are totally off-scale batshit.

Over the past decade or so, it seems that pretty much all of the world-class legislative zaniness has come from State assemblymen and State senators. If you're wondering how the hell our US Representatives and Senators got to be so goddamn' off-the-hook insane, just remember where most of them came from -- State legislatures, the very crucible of zany.

op:

flugnutz
a large part of this transfer will be to retain teachers ...
i think that is father S's beef point
he hates ....schooling

it might be medicaid but it isn't

only I alone
here among
this clique of no no nanettes
actually down right despises ....health

op:

btw i'd gladly see us devolve into states
if we lost the armada complex along with a "strong central gub

i liked the articles of confederation

of course states should be allowed
to amalgamate

with 50 states we pwogs
could prolly get control of one or two

one might become ...the new worlds sweden

yes !!!!

http://www.jonathancrocker.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/malin-akerman2.jpg

State govs have always been much more bought-and-sold that DC. That's just hidden history 101, and Logic 101.

But the aid in question is for schools and cops, etc, as OP says.

Meanwhile, op-san, how much of what Tyson says now makes it through the in-office force field? I'd wager heavily: next to none. Just as Al Gore only remembers the climate when not the Veep or a Senator, this Tyson character was in there before, and never said thing one about employment then.

westerby:

Geez, you guys are pitiless. Do you have any idea of how many jobs, pensions, services are already being hacked away at the state level?

op:

laura is a big bright side of wall srteet
hot tricks gal
look at her board postions

http://threadforthought.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Untitled-film-still-255-by-Cindy-Sherman-crawling-mannequin.jpg

err is that carla !!!!

why what a fraud ...

op:

westerby

"Do you have any idea of how many jobs, pensions, services are already being hacked away at the state level"

as burt lancaster said
more or less
in
that darkest of dark 60's romps
judgement at nuremberg
by stanley aristophanes kramer

"i am aware i am aware "

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/images/judgmentatnuremberglancaster1.JPG

westerby:

OP: ok, let's hasten the collapse of everything, toss our ol mums and dads on the garbage heap, speed up anger and resistance, bring on some real repression! Yeah!!!

Al Schumann:

Westerby, you make a good point. The evisceration of the public sector yields only misery.

As to the wickedness that state govs do:

Dunno about other states. Here in NH, for the small town which gave me the good/bad years of my youth, the education budget was slashed by $7 million.

That amount is the entire state allotment, which was cut in full. No $ from the state.

Not a poor town, but not as wealthy as some of the neighbors. And the "local" high school is a regional affair, private and therefore not subject to the state's more direct meddling.

If it were in Connecticut or Rhode Island, it'd be a prep school.

But, it's not - so the local towns, with the State's help, have been sending their kids to a significantly better school than the surrounds could otherwise provide, sans tuition.

Not just a prep school environment, either. Graduates kids with automotive, forestry, health care, hospitality and beautician licenses, if that's the path they choose. Full auto body shop, full forestry service, full aggie program. And, when I was a kid, a full clerical curriculum, before the onset of the computerized era.

Since the towns pay the school directly, a lot of kids who'd otherwise be priced out get a shot at any number of practical and impractical (depending on your perspective) educational offerings.

And large, for northern NE - as in close to 4000 students. People move there, to get their kids in this school.

But, without the State's considerable dollar, the towns find themselves with a shortfall that cannot be met without raising already high property taxes higher.

All this, because the people looking to climb the cursus honorum so hardfucked the State coffers that they guaranteed themselves a campaign theme through 2014 - with the State going broke, broad based taxes back on the table (NH has none), and the lawn order brigade out in force, sniffing out every nook, rook or broken neighborhood with brown people in it. Or poor people with unkempt lawns.

So what's a small town to do?

Raise the local taxes even higher, pricing out everyone who isn't high church, white and able to pay $12-20k in property taxes.

Meaning the people who have to leave end up leaving the state entirely, taking their brown and poor asses back to Massachusetts, where the divide between rich and poor is breaking wider at an even faster pace.

That's what State gov'ts do...

Sounds like Jack Crow lives in Yuppertown.

Meanwhile, he adds, in an indirect way, to the point: State government is more, not less, purchased and inegalitarian.

But that should never be news to a lefty. It's been true since before 1789.

No, Michael. I live in urban NH. The Yuppies live in Cambridge, Newton and Portsmouth.

Al Schumann:

Jack, that's wonderfully evocative. The process used to go a bit slower in the Halcyon Days of Our Youth, but the miracle of structured investment and layers of securitization have compressed it into a short business cycle. The banksters, bless their hearts, know efficiency, and the sensible shoes sycophants seeking office know who butters their buns.

I assume all SMBIVANs know the scenario, but I can't help myself. Lovely small town schools have always played a big part in the New England real estate business. They're what draw the yuppies in. But the yuppies don't drive the process. They're gratifyingly predictable useful idiots; self-involved consumers. Once their kids are ready for national brand merit academies, their support for financing small town schools dries up. They wail about paying taxes for schools they don't need any more and threaten to move. Meanwhile, the real estate bubbles created by their influx have crushed affordable housing. No one notices until the working class people they see all have gray hair. Where are their youngsters? Who knows, who knows, gone, gone... Lot values remain stuck until enough sunk cost desperados are wiped out. At which point speculative developers buy them, sit on them, pray for enough stagnation to force out their undercapitalized competitors and drive down prices enough for Boho overachieving hipsters to move in.

The high skilled, independent tradesmen and small town entrepreneurs by and large support the bubble in the early phases. The money to be made from it is intense. Picture eating venison four times a week to get the feel of its allure. Getting in on the "economic growth" is a way to raise the kids several steps up the class ladder.

And, lest we forget, cars! The highways make it all possible. If you need yuppies, you need roads for their internal combustion status symbols.

op:

"The high skilled, independent tradesmen and small town entrepreneurs "

i'll be their commissar some day
so they better repent this yup-licking

'cause as chief shithead in charge of
small biz-co op credit flows
i'll have the social juice
to allow em to make something happen for themselves
or
let em
drift dabble and drudge
in other words
allow the iron laws of subsistence
in a social market world
make just a few more
gulag factory hands
out of em

Al Schumann:

Owen, they're repenting even as I type. The most entrepreneurial of them are trying to reconcile their Traditional Values with the need to hire immigrants, preferably "illegal" immigrants, to replace the labor force that was driven away by the bubble. The rest are fragmented; some would like a social market, provided the gulag was stocked only with the political class guillotine fodder.

As my parents live in rural NH, and I have spent plenty of time visiting them, I can vouch for Jack's appraisal of it being NOT yuppertown. Rural NH is pure yankee redneck, the people remote and self-reliant, some bitter, most just wanting to be left alone -- especially by yuppies. They are pretty damned conservative but like the Old Man of the Mountain at Pinkham Notch, they are crumbling into the earth.

The yupsters of NH are of course not too different than the yupsters of Boston and its environs, mainly because that area is the primary source of the NH yupster contingent.

Most left-leaners who seek the rural beauty of mountainous northern New England choose the sister across the river, the Green Mountain State. Hence "socialist" Bernie Sanders.

**********

op, does Laura Tyson give you a chubby?

Boink:

And, lest we forget, cars! The highways make it all possible.

What is the status value of a horse?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMVhWYmj84g&feature=related

Michael Hureaux:

It's amazing how many syllables Ms. Tyson and crew can expend saying so very little.

Stan Pillon:

Reasonable thoughts. It’s hard to find an analyst of your level, who are aware of the facts given in this article. Maybe one research paper service could provide people with good information like you. Very knowledgeable article.

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