"Fiscal Apocalypse Now" (Prof. J. Bradford Delong)

[swag]

via Economist's View

Fiscal Apocalypse Now by J. Bradford Delong (Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a former Assistant US Treasury Secretary.)

excerpt:


As a result, in 2000 and 2001 nobody was really sure of the Bush administration’s policy direction. Was it traditional fiscal conservativism? Was it to do what Democrats do, but do it better? Was it to “starve the beast” by pumping up government debt to the point that social programs would have to be cut?

The first two priorities, if well designed and well implemented, are certainly honorable goals for a government to pursue. The third is less honorable, and likely to fail: it relies on the dangerously weak premise that the party in power’s political adversaries will be more public-spirited and less ruthless when they return to government.

Of course, conservatives and Republicans could hope that their own favorite policy priorities would emerge as the administration’s preferred strategy. Or they could be content with whichever of the three strategies that they expected to see, agreeing that, in any case, fiscal policy was always going to be much better than it would have been under Democratic rule.

But then a strange thing happened: the Bush administration did not order any of the three options that were thought to be on the menu. It chose something different entirely: big tax cuts, yes, but tax cuts that were badly designed from a genuine supply-side perspective aimed at boosting growth, as well as Democratic domestic spending priorities, but very badly implemented. Moreover, the Bush administration combined its policies with an extraordinary reluctance to veto anything coming out of Congress, and, after the year or two that it took for this to become obvious, an inability to restrain Congress at all.

What emerged was neither traditional fiscal conservatism nor Democratic policies without Democrats nor starve-the–beast populism, but something that has no name. An exchange between two characters in a scene from the movie “Apocalypse Now” captures an anti-ethic that characterizes the Bush administration’s policies as well:

Willard: “They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.”

Kurtz: “Are my methods unsound?”

Willard: “I don’t see any method at all, sir.”

[WiseButAngrySara]

1. K & R & Thanks! ....n/t

[cliss]

2. Oh, I have a name for it.

It's called 'radicalism'. Bush is no conservative. He's a radical in sheep's clothing.

The people running the show could also be called reactionary because they are so far to the right. I think a lot of people have figured it out by now.

Thank you for posting, Swag.

[swag]

3. You might enjoy Mark Thoma's blog (U of O economist)

http://economistsview.typepad.com/

[swag]

4. A kick before dying.

[lonestarnot]

5. This isn't going to die a quick death because I do not intend to let it

all day!

[lonestarnot]

6. kick

:kick:

[Elwood P Dowd]

7. Posts relating to economics sink like a rock on this board. Kick

:kick:

[stop the bleeding]

8. great quote - and what happened to Col Kurtz at the end of the movie??

I know but I wanted other people to think on this for a second

[Jemmons]

9. I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one.

They brought it up like room service. And when it was over I would never want another.





The Movie!






And kick.

[Coexist]

10. kick

[Iowa]

11. Haven't they actually pursued a more radicalized version of the third?

"...pumping up government debt to the point that social programs would have to be cut."

The primary difference being that they have operated so recklessly that the process has been greatly accelerated - and instead of causing programs to be "cut" - the goal is to eliminate them outright in the interests of corporatism.

[TexasLawyer]

12. Peggy Noonan says...

“If I’d thought was a big-spending Rockefeller Republican.... I wouldn’t have voted for him...,”

Thanks, Peg. Better late than never.

[lonestarnot]

13. kickaroo

:kick: