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Dr. Christina Romer’s economic speech today, marking her last speech as an administration official, is an admission that the fiscal stimulus package that she helped craft has failed.
Calling the economic recovery “insufficient”, she noted that a 0.6% drop in the unemployment rate still leaves unemployment unbearably high. “Real GDP is growing, but not fast enough to create the hundreds of thousands of jobs each month that we need to return employment to its pre-crisis levels,” she said.
The Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus was meant to boost aggregate demand and get the economy going again. Estimates of GDP show that the United States is still 6% under its pre-crash trend, and that her plan hasn’t worked as expected.
“The United States still faces a substantial shortfall in aggregate demand… this shortfall in demand, rather than structural changes in the composition of our output… is the fundamental cause of our continued high unemployment,” Romer told the crowd at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Romer today called for a second round of fiscal stimulus to further boost aggregate demand, a tacit admission that her first round was a failure:
While we’d all like to find the inexpensive, magic bullet to our economic troubles, the truth is, it almost surely doesn’t exist. The only surefire way for policy makers to increase aggregate demand in the short-run is for the government to spend more and tax less. And in my view we should be moving forward on both fronts… the key is that we need to take action, and we need to do it quickly.
Somewhat paradoxically, Romer tried to defend the 2009 stimulus package, even as calls for a second round of stimulus is proof that the package was less successful than was predicted. Romer pointed out that large businesses are starting to be able to access the credit they need:
While credit remains tight for consumers and small businesses, lending standards have stopped tightening and are gradually starting to loosen, large firms are able to borrow at favorable rates and get the credit that they need for investment in day to day operations, and the financial industry has paid back the U.S. taxpayer at a rate few thought possible.
Many Republicans have criticized the Obama administration for painting a rosy picture of economic recovery, and Romer had herself predicted that the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising above 8%.
Defending her projections, Romer argued that she correctly predicted the stimulus’ effect, but failed to accurately forecast how bad the economy would have been in the absence of the stimulus, also known as the baseline estimate:
An estimate of what the economy will look like if a policy is adopted contains two components: a forecast of what would happen in the absence of the policy, and an estimate of the effect of the policy… we, like virtually every other forecaster, failed to anticipate how violent the recession would be in the absence of policy, and the degree to which the usual relationship between GDP and unemployment would break down.
Further, Romer asserted that the current recession represents an unprecedented problem, one that continues to puzzle economists to this day.
“To this day, economists don’t understand why firms cut production as much as they did, or why they cut labor so much more than they normally would,” said Romer. “The current recession has been fundamentally different from other post-war recessions… Rather than being caused by deliberate monetary actions, it began with interest rates at low levels… Precisely what has made it so terrifying, and so difficult to cure, is that we have been in largely uncharted territory.”
As Romer leaves the administration, she says that her only regret is that there is so much left to be done in order to ensure a stable economic recovery. “Policy-makers need to find the will to take the steps needed to finish the job and return the American economy to full health,” said Romer. “And no one should be blocking essential actions for partisan reasons.”
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Obama's Economic Chairman Resigns - Politics and Other Controversies -Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives, Liberals, Third Parties, Left-Wing, Right-Wing, Congress, President - Page 7 - City-Data Forum // Sep 2, 2010 at 10:18 am
[...] Romer: My Plan Failed "While we’d all like to find the inexpensive, magic bullet to our economic troubles, the truth is, it almost surely doesn’t exist. The only surefire way for policy makers to increase aggregate demand in the short-run is for the government to spend more and tax less. And in my view we should be moving forward on both fronts… the key is that we need to take action, and we need to do it quickly." She also used the terms "insufficient" to describe the economic recovery from her plan. Half the battle is admitting failure – only half. She still calls for government to spend more. [...]
dante,
“Taxing the rich” alone is not going to pull us out of this hole. We need to drastically cut spending. We are living beyond our means.
Hey, just in case November doesn’t work out well, can somebody please recommend a nice country to spend a few years in? Somewhere with plenty of opportunity, low crime, and nice weather?
How’s New Zealand? Looks beautiful. Belize? Guatemala? Singapore is a little too crazy for me with their law enforcement. China I couldn’t deal with. Japan seems nice, but would probably require learning Japanese. I hear Colombia is on the up and up. Brazil might be a little dangerous; same with South Africa. I like England, but they’re too far down the road to ruin themselves. Canada is a possibility. India, UAE… thanks but no thanks. I’ve heard great things about Argentina and Peru.
Feedback anyone?
“To this day, economists don’t understand why firms cut production as much as they did, or why they cut labor so much more than they normally would,” said Romer.
Why is it that I understand why and my background in economics is decades old Econ 101 Macro and Micro Economics by Samuelson, Two Econ Books by Thomas Sowell, and reading Milton Friedman and Hayek.
Perhaps our professional economists spend too much time studying statistics and developing specious algorythms to read the “tea leaves when a little COMMON BUSINESS SENSE would suffice.
First the “stimulus package” stimulated NOTHING but simply transferred future wealth to present “black holes” – public employees salaries and pensions. The “waste” of the stimulus is easily determined by going line item by line item and seeing how STUPID and slothful was the dispensing of taxpayers present and future dollars.
The people making these decisions KNEW BETTER. Ms. Romer has written time an again about how Keynesian spending in a recession has and will FAIL.
In addition, the bleak future of INCREDIBLE INCREASES in both TAXES and Government Regulation (Government Control of Healthcare and Energy) frightens the “bejesus” out of any sane business owner or corporate executive.
Now if only Larry Summers and Tim Geithner would PLEASE RESIGN. Then again, it doesn’t really matter so long as the Socialist Democrats control Congress and Marxists control the Executive branch. Just so many incompetent people DESTROYING our economy and National Security today.
>“To this day, economists don’t understand why firms cut production as much as they did, or why they cut labor so much more than they normally would,” said Romer.
Which economists? You?! Any economist worth a damn knows why companies are terrified of hiring anybody. This radical anti-capitalist government is extremely punitive to businesses, and is about to become even more hostile to making any profit at all, which is, duh, why people hire workers.
Businesses also can’t compete with the government which is hiring people at TWICE the salary they could get in the private sector.
Thanks, you incompetent Marxists. We’ll be digging out of this for half a century at least. Unless we get the usual world war that typically ends these cycles. That will be fun.
dante // Sep 2, 2010 at 9:47 am
…it would make prudent financial sense to let the tax cuts expire and use the money to shore up our budget, wouldn’t it? Too bad that’s not what the GOP wants to do if it gets elected…
I think this could wind up tripping up the Republicans on their way to majorities in both houses. So far the Democrats in general (and the WH in particular) have been fairly useless in getting this message out to voters. But when you look at the differences between the tax plans that the Ds propose vs. what the Rs propose, they’re virtually indistinguishable for all but the top few percent of earners. The cuts for this group are shockingly large relative to the total and — if the Democrats are skillful in making this an issue — I don’t think that will seem fair to most American workers.
This chart makes the case quite effectively:
http://donklephant.com/2010/08/12/comparing-bushs-tax-cuts-vs-obamas-tax-cuts/
The stimulus failed // Sep 2, 2010 at 10:53 am
[...] [...]
TMN’s Economic Advisor: TMN Hasn’t A Clue | The Magic Negro // Sep 2, 2010 at 11:13 am
[...] Hell, I could have told you that and I did, several times. TMN has never ran a business, never made a payroll and every koo-aid drinker thought he was the Messiah. Hardly, he was and is a common Chicago thug politician and had NO BUSINESS ever being president. Next time instead of listening to the insane and wrong fascist progressive media, listen to us. We were right and we are always right. [...]
“When ordinary folk do something for 25 years and it doesn’t work, they accept it is a failure and give up. Governments are not like this. They have a different logic. If an intervention seems to work, they do more of it. If it doesn’t work, they believe it is because it was not conceived in a thorough enough way and they should, therefore, do much more of it.”
–Digby Anderson, writing in the Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2000
Mr. Anderson was referring to government diet guidelines but it just seems SOOO appropriate here.
Christina Romer: Sorry, we just don’t have a clue on how to fix the economy | Radio Vice Online // Sep 2, 2010 at 11:21 am
[...] in typicalk left fashion, she nails the reasons for the continued economic recession. “The United States still faces a substantial shortfall in aggregate demand… this shortfall in [...]
Wow, the Redstate trolls are out in force on this one!
terry,
how does it feel to be so wrong about everything that nobody bothers listening to you?
or, maybe i should flatter you for a while, and then try to sell you a bridge?
in case you haven’t noticed, your president and congress are in danger of completely destroying the country.
@Terry,
See, this is what I was getting at. Very few of these arm chair enthusiasts (none, actually) mention anything about the credit freeze we were at. They all want to pretend that the patient walked in with a broken leg and the doctors decided “why don’t we try and do the whole 6 million dollar man thing, with this one! Gentlemen, we can rebuild him!!”. Rather than “the patient came in with no pulse and evidence of a punctured lung, so, we did EVERYTHING we could to save him… and we did!”
I’ve been waiting for a while to hear from a right wing economist who starts the conversation with “we were on the verge of another depression, possibly worse than the first one, but here’s why the stimulus was not the correct approach to unfreezing credit and getting money circulating again…”
No such argument to be found, sinz makes a very unconvincing stab at “taking our eye off the ball vis-a-vis unemployment”, which has nothing to do with the question. Everyone else is just passing gas in their bath tub.
drdemento,
“See, this is what I was getting at. Very few of these arm chair enthusiasts (none, actually) mention anything about the credit freeze we were at.”
You mean the one we’re STILL IN?
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BUSLOANS
Hahahaha… let’s see now:
We were on the verge of another depression, possibly worse than the first one, but here’s why the stimulus was not the correct approach to unfreezing credit and getting money circulating again. (DRUM ROLL!!!) The proof is in the pudding. See above chart.
And can I add… can we stop talking about “the economy” as a “patient.” This is simply Marxist thought. The nation, the Geist, is not some amorphous entity. WE are the economy. If you do things that harm PERSONS in their capacity as PRODUCERS (e.g. raise taxes, carelessly regulate, punish for saving, illegalize certain wage contracts) and CONSUMERS (restricting choice, substituting preferences) you hurt “the economy.”
Stop thinking like primitive statist freaks. Think about the PEOPLE who are impacted by your damn stupid policies. This isn’t about Obama, the Democrats, or the Republicans. It’s about US – the AMERICANS who are trying to PRODUCE our way out of depression.
Such crass idiocy. I swear…
WillyP
What does it feel like to be the site nutter? Of course you don’t recognize yourself as the site nutter because in your own world you are right about everything.
terry,
Stop with the Daddy complex already. If you think I’m wrong about something specific, call me on it and we can debate. But don’t make lame statements like “YOU ALWAYS THINK YOU’RE RIGHT!” and them slam the door of your bedroom.
Pathetic.
and the way you people, and romer for that matter, speak of this stimulus…
The demand gap was $1.5 trillion. That’s what we lost when the recession hit. We measure GDP, and it was X in January 2008. In January 2009, it was X minus $1.5 trillion. We therefore needed a $1.5 trillion stimulus to fill the “aggregate demand gap.”
This passes for intellectual talk? By this criteria, you could have a 3rd grader determine the size of the so-called stimulus, assuming your GDP statistics are correct (which they probably aren’t).
Who is the mastermind who decides where the $1.5 trillion will go? Does it go to highways, railways, new schools, more police, more hospitals? Perhaps some of each? Who could possibly argue that it’s bad to have more to spend in any of these areas?
The salient point and relevant point, to anybody besides a Democrat Drone, is that you’re DIVERTING resources from the private sector! You cannot spend for FREE. And the way government spends is not based on any rational calculation – that is, profit and loss.
You don’t need a degree to get this. Milton Friedman talked about it in a long, distinguished, and amiable career. Matter of fact, the more educated one allegedly is the more they seem to disregard the very basics of political economy. Is it because institutions of higher learning imbue their graduates with oversized egos? They certainly don’t seem to teach humility. Hence, the spectacle of an ugly propagandist, a Dr. Christine Romer, telling us that she simply was not given enough power to spend.
This attitude is disgusting. Every single one of the Founding Fathers would dismiss her as a petty tyrant. I for one am happy she’s gone, and hope Reid, Pelosi, and Obama follow suit.
@WillyP
Your petition to be argued with rationally (“If you think I’m wrong about something specific, call me on it and we can debate”) is hard to take seriously when you spend most of your time using techniques common to my daughter’s 3rd grade class in your exchanges. Note how you keep changing my handle. What you’re missing is that my handle “drdredel” is already a joke… one that you don’t get, so, you think you’re being clever when you alter it, in a really juvenile attempt at insulting me. You fail on both counts. There is nothing (literally nothing) you can say to get a rise out of me, but your actions do confirm (not that much confirmation is needed) that your capacity for thought as well as your general wealth of knowledge is fairly limited.
Anyway… you want to debate on the merits of your argument. Ok, let’s go…
drdemento,
“See, this is what I was getting at. Very few of these arm chair enthusiasts (none, actually) mention anything about the credit freeze we were at.”
You mean the one we’re STILL IN?
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BUSLOANS
Hahahaha… let’s see now:
2 years ago we came to the brink of total economic collapse. When I say “credit freeze” I mean a complete shut down of all INTER-bank lending! I’m not talking about you getting declined for your Sears card. I’m talking about a global cessation of capital movement upon which all our various economies are predicated.
The stimulus was, first and foremost, designed to free up capital so that the above would not happen; A signal to the banks that they can keep lending and not worry that they will never see their money again. I don’t see any signs of us being on the verge of this problem again today (though we might enter into another recession, but that’s a totally different problem than the catastrophe I’m talking about)… but even if we were, that has nothing to do with how the problem was addressed then. And it WAS like dealing with a patient so the analogy is totally apt, since there was a very specific problem that you and I and your neighbor’s dog had absolutely no way to fix. There was only one body that could (try to) fix it and that was the federal government. Which they did (it was still under Bush btw) and then continued under Obama.
So the question remains, what would have been the preferred solution if you’re unhappy with how the Bush and Obama administrations handled it? I recognize that a huge argument is “the banks caused this mess, so, why did we have to help them?”, Which is a totally valid point of view, except that if we hadn’t helped them we would all suffer grave consequences. It would have been the most visceral variation on chopping off our (collective) nose to spite our face.
drdemento,
Only a naif or an alarmist with no context of history would believe that ALL INTERBANK LENDING as well as all global capital flow would stop for any protracted period of time. If the government did not act – which would have been the PROPER response – liquidations, bankruptcies, mergers, write downs… all of these would have occurred in relatively short order. Unemployment might have spiked at 20% for a period of 6 months, but very soon thereafter prices would fall, and the economy would adjust. By now we’d be back to frictional unemployment, the stock market would be higher in real terms, and retirees would again be earnings interest on their fixed income investments. We also wouldn’t be $13 trillion in the hole, but paying out way out.
Look, I’m sorry I keep repeating this, but it’s just painfully obvious you get your thought patterns from inane journalists and pseudo economists who are basically statists at heart.
Read some Milton Friedman, read some Hayek, read some Mises and Bastiat and Hazlitt.
If not, fine, continue with your analogy of the “patient.” Maybe this time next year you’ll finally realize you’ve been poisoning him.
“It would have been the most visceral variation on chopping off our (collective) nose to spite our face.”
Welcome to Great Depression 2. Hope you’re enjoying your deliverance from suffering. Are you a masochist?
drdredel-
You wrote:
The stimulus was, first and foremost, designed to free up capital so that the above would not happen; A signal to the banks that they can keep lending and not worry that they will never see their money again.
When you use the word “stimulus,” I assume you’re referring to the totality of the government’s efforts to stimulate the economy, rather than the $787B legislation that passed in February 2009, because if it’s the latter, what you’ve written above is factually incorrect.
The stimulus legislation provided a modest, temporary boost in GDP, and may have reduced unemployment by 2% or so – which is a far cry from saving us from a depression.
If, on the other hand, you mean TARP and the Fed’s emergency lending programs (which is what it appears you mean), which were well underway when Obama was inaugurated, then yes – they are responsible for helping thaw the credit markets and, quite possibly, averting catastrophe. It’s amazing how quickly people have forgotten just how bad things were in the fall of 2008.
averting catastrophe? i remember how bad things were, sure. at the time i worked for morgan stanley. our stock was about $5 a share.
we haven’t averted anything. we’ve kicked the can down the road and we’re now waiting for another, bigger collapse. or permanent malaise. both sound like Great Depression 2 to me.
i’d have much rather suffered for 6 months, even 12 months, if it meant eventual recovery. the “patient” (economy) is still etherized and the “doctor” (government) has no idea what to do.
@abj,
I did mean the emergency lending programs and I agree that it probably averted catastrophe.
@willyp (note how I continue to use your designated handle, because even though I can think of no shortage of ways to play on your handle in ways that would be insulting, I think that would make me look silly), I don’t know if you’re wrong in your estimation of how things would have gone. But the fact is that you also don’t know if you’re wrong in your estimation of how things would have gone. And as per usual (and typically of someone who, previously, has defended blind faith in religion) you are willing to boldly and convincingly, even arrogantly, proclaim things about which you can only be guessing. Don’t get me wrong, it may be an educated guess… it MAY even be right… but it’s still just a guess and yet you present it as the obvious and most definite reality (that would have been).
Anyway… unless I’m misreading your post, you seem to feel that while it would have been a painful 6 months, it would, nonetheless be basically, no big deal.
However, as I asked before, I’d like to see quotes from reputable economists that take your view on this matter. Namely, that we would have entered a depression and unemployment would have spiked to 20% but after 6 months things would, more or less, return to normal. Also, what repercussions would such a 6 months have on the nation long term? What about the globe? I can think of many scenarios where such a 6 months costs us 2 decades of recovery.
All the economists that I have read paint a much drearier picture (though they too are obviously speculating since there is no way to know what *would have happened for certain).
drdemento,
there are many points to be made, although i’m extremely fatigued at making them…
the first has to do with methodology, and the glimmer of understanding your post hints at. economics is not a science that can be learned through empiricism. it just doesn’t lend itself to isolating variables. how can i tell if the recession would be shorter if we had not bailed the banks comes from my understanding of theory. and the theory says that anything you do to stop the crucial adjustment following a credit expansion – that is, what we call a recession/depression – will only prolong the inevitable. and more than that, if you aggressively intervene, you’ll cause ancillary problems. this is the law of unintended consequences. it’s as old as the science of economics itself and it always true.
i can’t say with precision what would have happened, and i don’t. i estimated 6-12 months because it seems reasonable based on prior depressions of similar magnitudes. the ’29 bust, the late ’70s/early ’80s depression, and the ’21 depression. in 2 of these cases the federal government took appropriate action – slashed spending and taxes. in the case of ’29, we had an extremely energetic and aggressive executive, a former commerce secretary, named herbert hoover who thought he could trump economic law. suffice to say he’d have had as much luck trying to trump gravity.
what sort of “credible economist” are you looking for? for the most part, they’re a discredited bunch. wouldn’t you agree? we employee hundreds at the Fed, and still we’re in a depression. if they really understood what they were doing, if they “worked as advertised,” we’d never be in a depression in the first place. this was the promise of founders of the Fed, this was the promise of Irving Fisher and his “price stabilization” schemes, this was the promise of keynes. matter of fact, this was the promise of socialists way back when, and of the nazis, and the bolsheviks. you see, before we decided, in nihilistic fashion, that depressions are mystical events that emanate from without, people used to study the causes. until mises elaborated the modern theory, socialists used to claim that these occurrences were a natural phenomenon of the “anarchy” of laissez-faire.
and the socialists basically won the day with keynes. he committed the most fundamental intellectual error in economics. he believed he could design a better system himself, rather than trusting the design to individuals who contribute to an emerging and constantly evolving order. this is what hayek termed “the fatal conceit.”
i’m giving you the intellectual history of economics in the 20th century because it’s impossible to understand why our policy makers think like they do unless you understand their heritage. ben bernanke was a student of Friedman, who continued Fisher’s work on price stability through monetary machinations. declining prices, that is deflation, were looked at as bad. of course that was nonsense from the start, because assuming a constant money supply and ever more productive society, the natural pressure on prices would be downward. nonetheless, friedman, inspired by fisher’s work from the 1920s, wrote a long volume (with anna schwartz) on how to combat depressions with inflation (or “easy money”). this was monetarism. it was tried in the united states and in england and failed. friedman abandoned it himself, and also eventually lose his love for the Fed.
bernanke apparently feels monetarism is appropriate. that’s been his policy through “quantitative easing” and “credit easing.” in what SHOULD be a deflationary time, we actually have mild inflation. and besides, if the central bank is not going to inflate, what other purpose does it serve? if bernanke got up one morning and announced that the Fed was powerless to combat recessions, people might question why it’s even operational. furthermore, bernanke makes obama’s life easier because he buys obama’s debt.
finally, i’ve always found it so strange how people actually do believe that printing money and papering over debt makes a difference in the real world. whether the banks were saved through bailouts or not, no real wealth would be affected either way. cooking the books doesn’t actually make a company “profitable,” it simply serves to deceive. so in another sense, letting companies fail is merely being honest with ourselves.
look, the tragic part about this situation is that it was made in-house. if the Fed hadn’t reduced interest rates to a paltry 2% in the wake of 9/11, the housing bubble would never have gotten this big. sure, the cra would have made some bad loans and we’d have a subprime problem. but nothing even close to the $2 trillion housing bubble that eventually popped.
when faced with failure, a smart person identifies the cause of failures, remedies it, and moves on. as a nation we’ve allowed egghead economists to convince us that sweeping our problems under the rug is the enlightened policy agenda. conveniently, these same economists are also on the payroll of the same government who has admitted to using crisis for its own gain.
take all of what i just wrote into consideration. i didn’t get into theory, but the motivations alone should at least make you think that maybe, just maybe, this “recession” is being made worse by our government and academic economists.
Daily scoreboard « Don Surber // Sep 2, 2010 at 5:01 pm
[...] From Tim Mak: “Dr. Christina Romer’s economic speech today, marking her last speech as an [...]
@WillyP
Firstly I appreciate the lengthy and mostly hyperbole free post (the tip of the hat to nazis and bolshevik’s excluded).
But it seems that you are contradicting yourself in one major place…
look, the tragic part about this situation is that it was made in-house. if the Fed hadn’t reduced interest rates to a paltry 2% in the wake of 9/11, the housing bubble would never have gotten this big. sure, the cra would have made some bad loans and we’d have a subprime problem. but nothing even close to the $2 trillion housing bubble that eventually popped.
If that’s true, then how could everything else you said about the fundamental flaw in our Keynesian system in the above paragraph also be true? I understand your frustration with the Fed and certainly many rational people have argued against it, but you’re lumping so many things into the same canoe it’s hard to keep track where you go off the rails (in my rail canoe metaphor… bear with me). But for the sake of simplicity I’ll just point out that if you are right, and if the housing bubble was caused by the low interest rate, and if the housing bubble is also the principal element responsible for our financial woes, then why throw the baby out with the bath water? Why not say “our system is actually set up to work pretty well, and has been working pretty well, outside of these sorts of totally unprecedented extra-ordinary occurrences”. Of course to a large extent the money games that we play are all predicated on a collective mythology; a religion of finance, where people put their faith in a variety of (mostly) unverifiable beliefs and proceed from there with the assumption that as long as everyone holds these beliefs collectively, everything works. There are no runs on banks, etc. You seem to want to have an economic system that is based on reality, where, if they wanted to, everyone can walk over to their bank at the same time and withdraw all their money. I’m not saying this wouldn’t be preferable… I certainly would prefer to live in a reality based economy, but I don’t think anyone believes that’s possible at this point in the game. So, blaming the administration for doing what it thought made the most sense to reassure the public and the business sector that everything will be ok (even if it was all smoke and mirrors) was really anything we could ask since the entire global economy IS all smoke and mirrors!
drdemento,
I’m totally exhausted and drinking what I believe to be sour wine. So this is going to be very short.
1) Why, if we can recognize the causes of the business cycle, wouldn’t we work towards a more just world and eliminate the causes? You may not think it practical, but you likely still want some people out there at least attempting to correct the underlying flaw, no?
2) Regardless of what is done with the Fed, the rational solution to remedying our economy is still my professed solution. What we’ve done is no solution. It’s just making things worse and costing us one of our most precious resources – time. The faster the corrections occur on ledgers, the faster we’ll recover and can stop worrying about our economic future. Don’t you prefer to live in a world of relative stability, rather than worrying if you’ll be able to afford to retire/send your kids to school/make your mortgage payments etc.? At some point, you have to wonder just how much time we’ve been wasting talking about a financial/economic crisis that was always within our ability to solve.
I find this tragic, and I’m rather bitter. As someone who only began a career a few short years ago, I’d prefer that the next 10 years be prosperous, not wasted like the 1930s.
And, more than that… I find the long term prospects for a free America dimming as we doom ourselves to debt slavery. That’s the true tragedy.
» Obama Has No Answer on Unemployment - Big Government // Sep 3, 2010 at 1:00 pm
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Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Sounding The Depths // Sep 6, 2010 at 1:14 pm
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