MB Civic

Scarecrow @ FDL has a disturbing sampling of doom-like predictions from many mainstream economists ..

“Before now, I had never really understood how the 1930s could happen. Now I do. All one needs are fragile economies, a rigid monetary regime, intense debate over what must be done, widespread belief that suffering is good, myopic politicians, an inability to co-operate and failure to stay ahead of events” [Martin Wolf]; “The really crucial lesson of 1931, however, was about the dangers of policy abdication. Stronger European governments could have helped Austria manage its problems. Central banks, notably the Bank of France and the Federal Reserve, could have done much more to limit the damage. But nobody with the power to contain the crisis stepped up to the plate; everyone who could and should have acted declared that it was someone else’s responsibility” [Krugman]; a frequent [centrist ex-Clinton econominst Brad] DeLong post at Grasping Reality will begin with something like, “If you had told me __ years ago, that [unemployment, or fill in the blank] would still be this bad but that [Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner — or fill in the blanks] would be doing nothing about it, I would not have believed you.”

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