Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The Greater Depression

As usual where Obama is one of the lead negotiators, the deal is worse than it need be.

Paul Krugman has been calling this the Lesser Depression. But if the austerity budget holds in Congress, it will become the Greater Depression. There will be no WPA, no new government programs to help people in bad times. The austerity budget commits the government cutting what programs there are. Education funding will be cut, as will research. There will be nothing to keep cyclical unemployment from becoming structural unemployment.

I wonder how long it will take to get there? Is there any hope that Congress or the President will see sense before 2020?

(First sentence added the following day. Two weasel words removed a month after initial publication.)

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