At this stage in the electoral cycle, Democrats should be running hard against big banks and their consequences. Some roots of our current economic difficulties lie in the Clinton 1990s, but the real origins can be traced to the financial deregulation at the heart of the Reagan Revolution – and all the underlying problems became much worse in eight years of George W. Bush’s unique brand of excess and neglect.
The mismanagement of mammoth financial institutions over the past decade produced a crisis in September 2008 that required a substantial fiscal stimulus – among other bold government measures – simply to prevent the outbreak of a Second Great Depression. That sensible fiscal response, plus the “automatic stabilizers” that worsen any budget (and help limit job losses) as the economy slows, will end up adding around 40 percentage points to our net national debt as a percent of GDP. If you want to accuse the Obama administration of wantonly increasing the national debt – then let’s talk about the circumstances that required this fiscal policy.
The theme for the November midterms should be: Which part of the 8 million jobs lost [since December 2007] do you not understand? The big banks must be reined in and forced to break themselves up, or we’ll head directly for another such crisis.
Instead, the Democrats have fallen into a legislative and electoral trap that – amazingly – they built for themselves. Continue reading “A Trap Of Their Own Design”
The Baseline Scenario 