Right Thinking From The Left Coast
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Thursday, July 16, 2009

Green Shoots Turning Into a Prairie Fire
by

While a great deal of posting is being devoted to healthcare, I wanted to put up a contextual post on the economy as a whole.  Let’s start with the Delaware Lip, Joe Biden, who opened his mouth and crammed not just his foot, but his whole leg down his gullet: (via Drudge)

(CNSNews.com) – Vice President Joe Biden told people attending an AARP town hall meeting that unless the Democrat-supported health care plan becomes law the nation will go bankrupt and that the only way to avoid that fate is for the government to spend more money....
...“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

This comes on the heels of Robert Gibbs and Jared Bernstein repeating the Obama lie that the stimulus was meant to be a two year project: (via Jake Tapper’s blog)

ABC News’ Yunji de Nies reports:

Turns out the $787 billion “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” (AARA) was not designed for full economic recovery, but rather to “stabilize” the downturn.  That’s the word from White House officials today, who held off-camera briefings with reporters on how the AARA is working so far.

“This legislation was designed to cushion the downturn,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. “That’s why we have always talked about this as one function of economic recovery.”

When pressed about the change in terminology, Gibbs said he was not trying to temper expectations after the fact. “I can probably find 15 or 20 occasions when I said this in the lead up,” Gibbs said, explaining that he had always defined the AARA as part of a “multi-legged stool.”

Senior Economic Adviser Jared Bernstein said that the economy is improving—or at least getting “less bad.” And he said, that’s a good thing.

“It’s always challenging to explain that things getting less bad is actually a necessary path on the way to them being good, but that’s the truth,” Bernstein said. “The trends have to go recession, stabilization, recovery. Negative, less negative, positive.”

He continued, “For many key indicators, not all but many, we’re in that second stage, we’re in that stabilization stage. And it’s a fragile place to be, and it’s a good thing that this recovery act is a two year plan.”

Barney Frank even had the gall to go on the Daily Show and tell Stewart that the stimulus--oops, I mean “stabilization"--would have been even better if Specter, Snowe, and Collins had not demanded to leave $40 billion out of a $800 billion bill. (If there is a hell, I hope Frank’s version of it consists of him being raped by female porn stars)

Why is this important?  Because the administration and their supporters, having lost their hedge bet that the economy would start to pick up naturally this year and they could promote the stimulus as the keystone, are now trying to press the meme that the economy is getting “less bad,” and is therefore getting better and will be fine next year.  The only problem is, it probably won’t, as I’ll explain below the fold.

Posted by on 07/16/09 at 07:41 PM in Left Wing Idiocy   Politics   Law, & Economics  • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink • Discuss this in the forums
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