Jay Carney recently appeared on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, alibiing President Barack Obama’s ultimate responsibility for the failed economic recovery over the last three years. Like a child caught in the act of a household crime, Carney pleaded the excuses: how was President Barack Obama to know how really bad the economy was in January of 2009; no one told Obama that the economy was that bad; if he had only known better…or the like.
But, in fact, back in January and February of 2009, a number of noted economists as well as a host of progressives told Obama and the public how bad the recession was. They likened it to the great depression. Only President Obama did not listen to the voices of Paul Krugman, Martin Feldstein, James Galbraith, Martin Zandi, and many others. Instead Obama listened to the establishment, to the counsel of Wall Streeters Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, and instead of proposing an immediate infrastructure investment of a $1.5 trillion, and selling treasury notes to buy up subprime mortgages to restructure them, he offered a pittance of an infrastructure plan of $140 billion contained in a stimulus package of $787 billion, a third of which consisted of tax cuts. In other words, Obama caved in to Republican opposition and Wall Street and heeded the economic counsel of Geithner and Summers rather than economists like Krugman who said that his economic plan was too small to deal with the deepest recession since the great depression.
Now President Obama continues his band-aid approach to our never-ending recession, where true unemployment approaches 20% and not 8.6%, since many have fallen off the radar screen of national statistics, no longer eligible to collect, no longer attempting to find work. What is Obama’s big economic plan going into the 2012 election? Merely to extend the 2% cut in the payroll tax. Wow. Will this return our country to economic recovery and prosperity? Not a chance.
For Cenk Uygur’s transcript of his chastisement of President Obama on his repeated failure to listen to progressives, please see the article, President Barack Obama failed the economic recovery with a stimulus package too small
Connecticut Politics 