photo: b4b2 via Flickr
This is the kind of statement that makes me want to go out and join a Tea Party.
Geithner also said that administration officials are ”very worried” about recovering the more than 8 million jobs lost in the recession. But he noted that business growth has been improving and expects the economy ”is going to start creating jobs again.”
The secretary agreed that the national jobless rate — now at 9.7 percent — is ‘’still terribly high and is going to stay unacceptably high for a very long time” because of the damage caused by the recession.
”Just because this was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” Geithner said, ”a huge amount of damage was done to businesses and families across the country … and it’s going to take us a long time to heal that damage. ”
If you paired that highlighted statement with the notion that the Administration was doing everything they could to lower the jobless rate, it would maybe be acceptable. But they’re not. Obviously Congress bears some of this responsibility as well, but the government isn’t doing what’s necessary to arrest something “unacceptably high” with a more expansionary fiscal policy or monetary policy. The deficit scolds have succeeded in turning the conversation their way, prolonging the economic misery for millions of families. And the Federal Reserve (as well as some of the other assets in the monetary policy artillery, for that matter) seems too spooked by non-existent inflation to care about monetary expansion; in fact, they’re pulling back already.
You cannot say something will be “unacceptably high” for the distant future. That connotes an acceptance with the way things are. As Duncan Black says, “If they really think they’ve done all that is theoretically possible (not true) say it. If there’s something they’d like to do, but Congress won’t let it happen, tell us what it is.”
P.S. Just to extend this out a bit, here’s a story about the loss of a vital bus system in Clayton County, Georgia. This is just an example of public transit cutbacks, motivated most by shortfalls in state budgets, at a time when they are often the only affordable option for millions and ridership, adjusting for these cutbacks, is booming (up 31% since 1995). Public transit provides economic activity through freedom of movement, lowers greenhouse gas emissions and aids commuters in expanding their job-seeking opportunities. Why would we let it wither? It’s flat crazy. Yet the stimulus package provides DoT grants for new construction but not maintenance and operating expenses.
So there’s NOTHING the White House can do about that? Transit cuts must stay “unacceptably high”?
We know how to get the economy moving again. Keynes provided the model and it worked 75 years ago. The only thing unacceptable is a failure to use the proven tools.
