The Greek Parliament has just passed more austerity measures, including layoffs and salary reductions for civil servants. Somewhere, Paul Krugman is screaming into a pillow.
As we all know, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Poll after poll shows that 90% or more of Americans support universal background checks for gun purchases. And that includes solid majorities of NRA members and Republicans. Yet even this, the most popular and least controversial of gun reforms, seems doomed, unable to get out of the Democrat-controlled Senate, let alone the GOP House.
Sahil Kapur writes today at Talking Points Memo:
“Politically, Democratic leaders are in a lose-lose predicament. If they somehow squeeze background checks through the Senate (it’ll still have to pass the House), their vulnerable members will face the wrath of the NRA. If the legislation fails, leaders will anger and demoralize their liberal base, which is demanding meaningful action on guns.”
It seems to me that if this legislation fails, the anger and despair and frustration will rightly extend well beyond the liberal base. Background checks are not just a liberal cause, they are supported all across the political spectrum.
Kapur names four Dem senators who won’t vote for background checks because they are up for re-election in 2014: Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Max Baucus of Montana. I hope they lose their seats — they don’t deserve the extraordinary honor and power of being a senator.
Jewish tradition says that if you save one life, you save the whole world. I can’t imagine that universal background checks won’t save at least one life. If I lost my Senate seat, but knew that I’d saved a life because of my vote, I’d consider that an excellent trade-off and be proud and at peace for the rest of my life. And, given the lop-sided polling, I believe these senators can do the right thing and win in 2014 anyway.
It may be inevitable that crazies like Adam Lanza will do us harm, but it’s not inevitable that cowards will lead us.
Paul Krugman reports (“The Big Fail,” NYT) from the annual meeting of the American Economic Association:
“The crisis in Greece was taken, wrongly, as a sign that all governments had better slash spending and deficits right away. Austerity became the order of the day, and supposed experts who should have known better cheered the process on, while the warnings of some (but not enough) economists that austerity would derail recovery were ignored. For example, the president of the European Central Bank confidently asserted that “the idea that austerity measures could trigger stagnation is incorrect.”
“Well, someone was incorrect, all right.
“Of the papers presented at this meeting, probably the biggest flash came from one by Olivier Blanchard and Daniel Leigh of the International Monetary Fund. Formally, the paper represents the views only of the authors; but Mr. Blanchard, the I.M.F.’s chief economist, isn’t an ordinary researcher, and the paper has been widely taken as a sign that the fund has had a major rethinking of economic policy.
“For what the paper concludes is not just that austerity has a depressing effect on weak economies, but that the adverse effect is much stronger than previously believed. The premature turn to austerity, it turns out, was a terrible mistake.
“European leaders, having created Depression-level suffering in debtor countries without restoring financial confidence, still insist that the answer is even more pain. The current British government, which killed a promising recovery by turning to austerity, completely refuses to consider the possibility that it made a mistake.
“And here in America, Republicans insist that they’ll use a confrontation over the debt ceiling — a deeply illegitimate action in itself — to demand spending cuts that would drive us back into recession.” Emphasis added.
Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said today: “The tax issue is finished, over, completed. That’s behind us. Now the question is what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and our future, and that’s our spending addiction.”
Then for good measure McConnell threw in the Greece canard, which is very effective in scaring people, but is irrelevant to our situation. Greece’s problem is not having its own floating currency and its own central bank.
I agree that we need to cut spending (How about getting out of Afghanistan ASAP?), but you cut spending by negotiating on stuff you haven’t bought yet. You don’t demand spending cuts by refusing to pay for the things you’ve already bought. And we need to balance spending cuts by reforming the tax code to get additional revenue.
If the GOP were so concerned about the national debt, they wouldn’t be willing to mess with our credit rating, driving up borrowing costs and throwing away money on interest payments.
From “Fighting Fiscal Phantoms,” Paul Krugman, NYT:
“But we’re not Greece, and it’s almost impossible to see how this [a run on Treasuries, a spike in interest rates and a return to recession] could actually happen to a country in our situation.
“For we have our own currency — and almost all of our debt, both private and public, is denominated in dollars. So our government, unlike the Greek government, literally can’t run out of money. After all, it can print the stuff.
“But if the U. S. government prints money to pay its bills, won’t that lead to inflation? No, not if the economy is still depressed.
“Still, haven’t crises like the one envisioned by deficit scolds happened in the past? Actually, no. As far as I can tell, every example supposedly illustrating the dangers of debt involves either a country that, like Greece today, lacked its own currency, or a country that, like Asian economies in the 1990s, had large debts in foreign currencies.
“For years, deficit scolds have held Washington in thrall with warnings of an imminent debt crisis, even though investors, who continue to buy U. S. bonds, clearly believe that such a crisis won’t happen; economic analysis says that such a crisis can’t happen; and the historical record shows no examples bearing any resemblance to our current situation in which such a crisis actually did happen.”
Aside from Bill, Barry has another BFF, Mario.
The head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, announced today that the bank will buy lots and lots of bonds from struggling euro zone countries to help reduce their borrowing costs, especially Italy and Spain. Draghi in effect drew a line in the sand, saying “The euro is irreversible.”
One country voted against the bond-buying plan. That’s right — Germany.
Do I think this will save the euro? No. But it means there won’t be a big panic between now and our election.
It also seems as if Israel won’t attack Iran between now and November 6, although Bibi is not exactly another BFF.
Looks as if Barry has everything under control. He just has to get through the debates without checking his watch or sighing and rolling his eyes.
A right winger now has the job nobody in their right mind would want. New Democracy’s Antonis Samaras was sworn in as Greece’s prime minister today, after forming a coalition with Socialist PASOK and the tiny Democratic Left party.
Samaras went to Harvard Business School, just like Mittens. He is from a wealthy family, just like Mittens.
Either New Democracy or PASOK has run Greece for the last four decades, so they represent the establishment. To show you how cliquish Greece is, Samaras was roommates at Amherst College with George Papandreou, who led one of the PASOK governments.
Leftist Syriza, and its young anti-austerity leader Alexis Tspiras, which finished behind New Democracy by less than 3% in this weekend’s voting, is waiting in the wings for this coalition to fail. And it will. I’ll be shocked if it lasts six months.
Embattled Farmers 