Sunday, October 24, 2010

And It's 1, 2, 3 Strikes Yer Out at the Oba' Game

Employing a lame baseball analogy (how...original) NYT pundit TLF comes up with an even lamer "cure" for the sluggish American economy:
How we got into this rut is no secret. We compensated for years of stagnating middle-class wages the easy way. Just as baseball players in the ’90s injected themselves with steroids to artificially build muscle to hit more home runs — instead of doing real bodybuilding — our two parties injected steroids, cheap credit, into Wall Street so it could go gambling and into Main Street so it could go home-buying. They both started hitting home runs, artificially — until the steroids ran dry. Now we have to rebuild America’s muscles the old-fashioned way.

How? In the short run, we’ll probably need more stimulus to get the economy moving again so people have the confidence to buy and invest.
Wrong, oh wise one. Piling on still more non-stimulating stimulus to the current package of non-stimulating stimulus won't do it. To inspire people to have confidence to buy and invest you're going to have to get rid of the profligate non-stimulator-in-chief who's spending you guys into the poor house for the foreseeable future and far beyond. Then and only then will fear strike out. (Sorry, but he started it).

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