Krugman: Obama Clueless. We're Doomed.

[Malerin]

"I’m with Simon Johnson here: how is it possible, at this late date, for Obama to be this clueless?"
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/clueless/

Seems Obama wasn't outraged enough over the Chase/Sachs CEO bonuses in a Business Week interview. Didn't we bail these guys out? Shouldn't they be kissing the ground Obama walks on for the continued existence of their companies? Shouldn't they have been forced to prostrate themselves daily in front of random taxpayers as a precondition to getting any bailout funds?

Have some more arugula, Obama. While these guys get bonuses, millions can't find work. Ain't oligarchy grand?

"We’re doomed," Krugman wrote on his Blog.

We're also ****ed.

 

[332nd]

Yep... We're doomed... blarg...

 

[Ziggurat]

Krugman's acting like a jilted lover. But he never should have fallen in love in the first place.

 

[Peephole]

Yeah, just look at Krugman gushing all over Obama back in 2008 and 2009:

But as I’ve tried to explain in previous columns, there really is a big difference between the candidates’ approaches. And new research, just released, confirms what I’ve been saying: the difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage — a key progressive goal — and falling far short.

Specifically, new estimates say that a plan resembling Mrs. Clinton’s would cover almost twice as many of those now uninsured as a plan resembling Mr. Obama’s — at only slightly higher cost.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/opinion/04krugman.html

Both candidates still standing are smart and appealing. Both have progressive agendas (although I believe that Hillary Clinton is more serious about achieving universal health care, and that Barack Obama has staked out positions that will undermine his own efforts).

...

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/opinion/11krugman.html

Finally, Barack Obama’s speech on the economy on Thursday followed the cautious pattern of his earlier statements on economic issues.

I was pleased that Mr. Obama came out strongly for broader financial regulation, which might help avert future crises. But his proposals for aid to the victims of the current crisis, though significant, are less sweeping than Mrs. Clinton’s: he wants to nudge private lenders into restructuring mortgages rather than having the government simply step in and get the job done.

Mr. Obama also continues to make permanent tax cuts — middle-class tax cuts, to be sure — a centerpiece of his economic plan. It’s not clear how he would pay both for these tax cuts and for initiatives like health care reform, so his tax-cut promises raise questions about how determined he really is to pursue a strongly progressive agenda.

All in all, the candidates’ positions on the mortgage crisis tell the same tale as their positions on health care: a tale that is seriously at odds with the way they’re often portrayed.

...

Finally, Mr. Obama is widely portrayed, not least by himself, as a transformational figure who will usher in a new era. But his actual policy proposals, though liberal, tend to be cautious and relatively orthodox.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/opinion/28krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Maybe I’m wrong, but my sense is that Jason Furman has become a proxy target for some Obama supporters who, now that the Great Satanness has been defeated, are suddenly starting to have the queasy feeling that their hero might be a bit of a …. centrist. I’m tempted to say I told you so; in fact, I guess I just did. But that’s all in the past now.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/jason-and-the-obamanauts/

A prominent Democratic Hillary supporter once told me that Obama gives him “post-partisan depression.” Indeed — his apparent unwillingness to take such clear shots is starting to seem bizarre.

...

For those who would have Obama be in post-election mode: the professionals at Pollster.com have this a scarily close (and tightening) race, with Obama only 2.2 points ahead. Obama needs to fight to win this thing, which is why his low-energy performance last week was disheartening to a lot of Democrats. The energy speech today was much, much better.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/post-partisan-depression/

But the numbers being reported — 40 percent of the whole, two-year plan — sound high. And all the news reports say that the high tax-cut share is intended to assuage Republicans; what this presumably means is that this was the message the off-the-record Obamanauts were told to convey.

...

OK, maybe this is just a head fake from the Obama people — they think they can win the PR battle by making bipartisan noises, then accusing the GOP of being obstructionist. But I’m really worried that they’re sending off signals of weakness right from the beginning, and that they’re just going to embolden the opposition.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/is-obama-relying-too-much-on-tax-cuts/

Whatever the explanation, the Obama plan just doesn’t look adequate to the economy’s need. To be sure, a third of a loaf is better than none. But right now we seem to be facing two major economic gaps: the gap between the economy’s potential and its likely performance, and the gap between Mr. Obama’s stern economic rhetoric and his somewhat disappointing economic plan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=2

The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/what-the-centrists-have-wrought/

Really bad news on the health care front. After making the case for a public option, and doing it very well, Obama said this:

...

There he goes again, gratuitously making a big gift to the other side.

My big fear about Obama has always been not that he doesn’t understand the issues, but that his urge to compromise — his vision of himself as a politician who transcends the old partisan divisions — will lead him to negotiate with himself, and give away far too much. He did that on the stimulus bill, where he offered an inadequate plan in order to win bipartisan support, then got nothing in return — and was forced to reduce the plan further so that Susan Collins could claim her pound of flesh.

And now he’s done it on a key component of health care reform. What was the point of signaling, right at this crucial moment, that he’s willing to give away the public plan? Let alone doing it at the very moment that he was making such a good case for it?

Maybe there’s a way to recover from this. But it’s up to the health reform activists to stiffen the administration’s spine. Obama may be satisfied with “broad parameters” — but the rest of us aren’t, and have to make that known.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/obama-messes-up-on-health-care-big-time/

 

[corplinx]

Krugman can be an emo kid sometimes. Just ignore his blog entries. They don't show the careful thought and editing that goes into his articles. Even his articles can go into shrill hysteria though with almost bipolar shifts.

His last update before Bush/Kerry election day was all about how there was change in the air and hope and flowers and trees and what a wonderful place America was. Then the next update was about how stupid america was and how he wasn't gonna take his ball and go home with it because america re-elected Bush.

 

[Malerin]

Krugman can be an emo kid sometimes. Just ignore his blog entries. They don't show the careful thought and editing that goes into his articles. Even his articles can go into shrill hysteria though with almost bipolar shifts.

His last update before Bush/Kerry election day was all about how there was change in the air and hope and flowers and trees and what a wonderful place America was. Then the next update was about how stupid america was and how he wasn't gonna take his ball and go home with it because america re-elected Bush.

I'm very emo on this. **** these bankers and their bonuses. I'm the head of a small teachers union, and we lost 20% of our teachers last year! These were good people, some of whom had been with us for five years. Class size went from 20 kids in a class (kindergarden through third) to 30 kids per class. My superintendent is retiring this year and admitted to me the stress of the layoffs just about killed him. Where was my district's bailout? Peoples' lives were devastated over this. And Goldman Sachs is doing God's work? We should have let the whole lot of them fail, and I hope the found money those rat bastard executives are getting brings a lot of trouble.

My wife just got her teaching credential. It might as well be a placemat. All she can do is sub and take the occasional job that comes around. I get a little emotional on this.

 

[WildCat]

Where was my district's bailout?

Sorry, the UAW has more clout than your pathetic union so all the money went to GM instead, and unlike the bankers they haven't paid it back.

 

[Malerin]

Sorry, the UAW has more clout than your pathetic union so all the money went to GM instead, and unlike the bankers they haven't paid it back.

They've paid back a small amount (about a billion).
I know, bailouts all around
But the auto industry did not nearly send us over the cliff, like the financial industry did. AIG's bailout dwarf's what GM got. Has GM been lavishing bonuses on its executives? Whitacre works for peanuts, compared to typical CEO's, and I haven't heard of him getting large bonuses. That's the really galling part. I know GM was doing so in 2008. Can't find any figures for beyond that.

I have a soft spot for blue-collar jobs, where people actually make things (although in the case of GM, some of the things they make a lot of people don't want to buy).

 

[AvalonXQ]

We should have let the whole lot of them fail,

On this I agree, and your reaction is part of the reason -- thanks to the bailout, you now think these people owe you something.
We shouldn't have bailed them out in the first place, but don't make the mistake of believing that they should do whatever the government says just because the government gave them money.

 

[corplinx]

Goldman Sachs is doing God's work?

No. However, Goldman Sachs paid back their tarp funds with a 23 percent annualized rate of return. We got our money back plus more.

Who you should really be mad at is whoever was overseeing the stewardship of AIG in our government. Their idea of breaking off units of AIG to sell during a economic crisis, to repay their TARP allocation, was comically tragic. There appeared to have been zero long term planning and only an immediate desire to get the funds back, which probably created a negative feedback loop.

This means the funds AIG had to pay out for swaps it issued to places like Goldman Sachs, may not be able to be reclaimed from AIG at all.

 

[novice skeptic]

I've long held that Paul Krugman is clueless. And I hate his beard too.

 

[Beerina]

Bush: Must have bailout now. NOW!

Critics: Shouldn't we at least have some rules?

Bush: No, no time for that. Must bail out now! No time for strings!

Congress: Ok


Any questions?



"Giving money and power to Congress is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P.J. O'Roarke

 

[Beerina]

Retired Exec: "When I was sitting in my oceanside mansion looking out over the Pacific, and I heard Obama chastise my company for executive bonuses, I felt so guilty I had to jet to my 24,000 square foot Paris apartment next to the Eiffel Tower and relax as Chef made my wife and I dinner."

 

[Emukt]

NYC teachers are happy that these guys get bonuses, because they're heavily taxed and the teachers get paid.

 

[Newtons Bit]

I'm very emo on this. **** these bankers and their bonuses. I'm the head of a small teachers union, and we lost 20% of our teachers last year! These were good people, some of whom had been with us for five years. Class size went from 20 kids in a class (kindergarden through third) to 30 kids per class. My superintendent is retiring this year and admitted to me the stress of the layoffs just about killed him. Where was my district's bailout? Peoples' lives were devastated over this. And Goldman Sachs is doing God's work? We should have let the whole lot of them fail, and I hope the found money those rat bastard executives are getting brings a lot of trouble.

My wife just got her teaching credential. It might as well be a placemat. All she can do is sub and take the occasional job that comes around. I get a little emotional on this.

My mother is a teacher. Her pension plan got looted. To make matters worse, the State paid the investment company a large finders fee for locating the financial genius of Bernie Madoff.

 

[Skeptic]

I'm no fan of Obama, but "newspaper pundit claims he's awful" is not much of a condemnation.

 

[Allen773]

Krugman is spot on, but he should never have supported Obama so much in the first place.

 

[Malerin]

I'm no fan of Obama, but "newspaper pundit claims he's awful" is not much of a condemnation.

Well, Krugman has a loyal following among liberals, but in the end, he's still just a pundit. My dad said something I thought was interesting.

"If Obama is losing people like

, he's in serious trouble". I think this is true. Not that I'll vote against Obama in 2012, but I doubt I'll be anywhere near as fired up as I was in 2008. Perhaps the economy will stage a sudden turn around and it will be "morning again" by then. I doubt it though.

 

[Malerin]

My mother is a teacher. Her pension plan got looted. To make matters worse, the State paid the investment company a large finders fee for locating the financial genius of Bernie Madoff.

What state is that? My state's pension fund took a hit, but it was in proportion to the market.

 

[Malerin]

NYC teachers are happy that these guys get bonuses, because they're heavily taxed and the teachers get paid.

I think they would have been happier to get the bailout money AIG got, instead of crumbs trickling down from the bonuses these SOB's are getting.

I don't know if NYC has/had massive layoffs. It's been devastating here in California (and honestly, California bears a tremendous amount of responsibility for the fiscal hole we're in).