Economic Experts Gather In DC To Explain Why Politics Has Doomed Us

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/economic-experts-gather-in-dc-to-explain-why-politics-has-doomed-us.php

Brian Beutler December 9, 2011, 6:00 AM

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Brian Beutler December 9, 2011, 6:00 AM 19891 533

As the U.S. government and governments in Europe respond to the global economic slump with conservative austerity measures, it’s easy to forget that the overwhelming professional economic consensus is that depressed countries that can afford to should be doing the opposite — ramping up government purchases of goods and services and putting off the budget cuts and tax increases for a few years.

This isn’t even close to what’s happening. And as the space between what these experts think should happen and what global elites are actually doing grows, the experts’ forecast is becoming more and more pessimistic.

Nowhere was this gloominess more clearly worn than at a symposium hosted by the New America Foundation in downtown Washington Wednesday evening.

share
Brian Beutler December 9, 2011, 6:00 AM 19891 533

As the U.S. government and governments in Europe respond to the global economic slump with conservative austerity measures, it’s easy to forget that the overwhelming professional economic consensus is that depressed countries that can afford to should be doing the opposite — ramping up government purchases of goods and services and putting off the budget cuts and tax increases for a few years.

This isn’t even close to what’s happening. And as the space between what these experts think should happen and what global elites are actually doing grows, the experts’ forecast is becoming more and more pessimistic.

Nowhere was this gloominess more clearly worn than at a symposium hosted by the New America Foundation in downtown Washington Wednesday evening.

[...]

But close observers of U.S. politics know how unlikely that is. Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan adviser who is a harsh critic of the current Republican party explained why.

“Basically we’re still stuck in the situation we were three years ago and we haven’t made any progress at all except that our problems are much worse because of political reasons, because we now have a crazy party in charge of one of the Houses of our Congress and they won’t allow anything to happen because it’s in their vested interest to make things worse,” Bartlett explained in his typically exasperated way. “Plus they have a theory that is completely nuts…. I’m very depressed. I’d love to see some program like this [paper] enacted. I see zero chance of it happening. The most we can hope for is that a complete crazy person like Newt Gingrich gets the Republican nomination, the Republicans lose so badly that they lose control of the House and don’t get control of the Senate and then maybe in a year we can finally talk about doing something rational such as what is discussed in this paper.”

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