A Weary Cynicism

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html

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"Originality is the art of concealing your source." (Thomas Edison)

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Paul Krugman's post yesterday reminded me of why I like to read him. His perspective on the "Wall Street Protests" is that the protesters are completely right about "why" they are protesting. He says a "weary cynicism" (a belief that justice will never be served) has taken over much of our political debate.

I have no interest in the political debate here but I will comment on the economy and business. Krugman's description of how "... outrageous the story of our economic woes really is" is a classic which he describes as a play in three acts: in the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. Act two: the bubbles burst, but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the weak regulations that were being proposed after the crisis.

And I quote, "Bear in mind, too, that experience has made it painfully clear that men in suits not only don't have any monopoly on wisdom, they have very little wisdom to offer. When talking heads on, say, CNBC mock the protesters as unserious, remember how many serious people assured us there was no housing bubble, that Alan Greenspan was an oracle and that budget deficits would send interest rates soaring."

And I quote, "But Democrats are being given what amounts to a second chance. The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies that failed to deliver economic recovery even as bankers repaid the favor by turning on the President. Now, however, Mr. Obama's party has a chance for a do-over. All it has to do is take these protests as seriously as they deserve to be taken."

And, if the protests goad some politicians into doing what they should have been doing all along (as Krugman so accurately points out), Occupy Wall Street will have been a smashing success.

And, all that's nice. I have a definition of "freedom" that I've always liked: "freedom" means we can do whatever we like (within the law and ethical bounds) unless it impinges on the freedom of others. If I want to use a bridge the "protesters" are blocking, they aren't free to do that. I don't care what they're protesting - that doesn't mean they get to shrink my freedoms.

Ron Suskind has a new book that was reviewed by Joe Nocera in the New York Times over the weekend: "Confidence Men." It's about what has gone on thus far in the Obama administration. Nocera points out that Suskind makes a persuasive case that Obama's inability to manage his own White House is a critical reason the administration has struggled to devise coherent economic policies. Of course, first and foremost, he brought in the wrong people - my favorite is Lawrence (don't call me "Larry") Summers, who stint as Harvard's president was one of the all time great disasters (women everywhere should read about it), is first among those. One of the worst among the many stories Nocera recounts is that, when there was a rare "almost" consensus among Obama's economic advisers (and I use that term loosely) that winding down Citigroup would be the right thing to do (here Obama actually made a decision to agree to do it), Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner simply waited the situation out and didn't do it. Dwight Eisenhower would have fired him - Obama did nothing.

I have a "weary cynicism" and it has a lot to do with electing the wrong people, appointing the wrong people, an economics profession that had no idea a worldwide financial crisis was coming (except, of course, for "Dr. Doom") and has no idea what to do to get the worldwide economy going again.

Somebody wake me when the unemployment rate is back down to 5%.