Kevin Williamson at NRO quotes from an Obama speech pre-stimulus:
Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we don't act immediately, millions more jobs will be lost, and national unemployment rates will approach double digits. More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that, at some point, we may be unable to reverse.
Well, Williamson notes, we acted immediately. Millions more jobs were lost. National unemployment rates are approaching double digits. So now what?
Williamson quotes the New York Times' economic poobah Paul Krugman:
"O.K., Thursday's jobs report settles it. We're going to need a bigger stimulus."
Well, I'm glad that's settled. A trillion dollars hasn't worked (Of course, the wiser heads were telling us it wouldn't work from the beginning) so the problem must be that we haven't yet dug ourselves deep enough into debt. Let's spend a couple trillion more that we don't have and see what that does for us.
And this guy won a Nobel Prize in economics. It just goes to show that in this amazing country anybody can get to the top.
Back when I learned to fly airplanes I was taught that when visibility is poor you must trust your instruments, not your senses. Trying to keep the plane straight and level based on what feels right will quickly cause you to become disoriented and spiral into the ground. Flying by what your body is telling you instead of by the objective data provided by your instruments is called flying by the seat of your pants, and that's what Krugman sounds like he's doing. Despite Mr. Krugman's intrepid willingness to go where no economist has gone before, the economic results of flying by the seat of your pants are pretty similar to the aerodynamic results.
RLC