Un-Liberaled Woman

This is what President Obama said the other night during the press conference to sell us on the idea of massive government spending.

I think that what I’ve said is what other economists have said across the political spectrum, which is that if you delay acting on an economy of this severity, then you potentially create a negative spiral that becomes much more difficult for us to get out of.

We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they did not act boldly and swiftly enough, and as a consequence they suffered what was called the “lost decade,” where essentially for the entire ’90s, they did not see any significant economic growth.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-!

Countered straight from his advocacy newsletter, The New York Times:

Economists tend to divide into two camps on the question of Japan’s infrastructure spending: those, many of them Americans like Mr. Geithner, who think it did not go far enough; and those, many of them Japanese, who think it was a colossal waste.

Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state and making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs. Much of the blame has fallen on the Liberal Democratic Party, which has long used government spending to grease rural vote-buying machines that help keep the party in power.

So I may not have a crystal ball, but let me take a wild guess that if that same situation plays out here like it did in Japan, geeeee, which party is going to be ousted they way my dad would through our cat out if it peed on the carpet???  Secretary (ehhh, shudder) Geithner, who said this kind of massive spending would work while failing to pay his fair share in avoiding, err, cheating his taxes.  Or will the actual citizens be right? You know,  like the ones who have to live through the failures of these policies, like in Japan, who probably are still cursing those politicians who turned their economy into a “welfare state.”  

Office pool question: Does Geitner get ousted in 2010 or 2011?

Side question: Does this qualify Obama for a Governance FAIL on the fail blog? Probably not but a girl can dream.