President Obama talks with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.
- Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says Europeans should seek to emulate the United States' economic policy of "balanced" austerity and growth:
Two challenges we're going to make the case to the Europeans to deal with is one, is having European economies grow means they need to get the right balance between their budget policy right, so that they can get growth moving.
No. Weak, tepid growth is not the key to broad prosperity or budget issues. All we got from it is a booming stock market for the wealthy and high unemployment for everyone else. Europeans don't need austerity-lite. Nor do we.
- One Federal Reserve Bank president says despite the weak employment figures and little to inflation, what Fed needs to do is tighten up:
The Federal Reserve should tighten monetary policy, or the central bank risks damaging longer-term economic growth, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City said Friday, according to a Dow Jones report. "Continuing this current policy outside of a crisis, outside of a recession, poses risks for us in the long term to achieve our objectives of sustainable economic growth," George said, according to Dow Jones.
Another one of our elites has it wrong. Despite everything the fed has done, every simple person predicting massive inflation has been dead wrong. Our problem is not loose money. Our problem is underutilized capacity and weak aggregate demand. (Sigh).
- Need another example of just how misguided our economic policymakers are? Okay:
Gene Sperling, a top economic adviser to Obama, said this week that the president was stepping up efforts to reach out to congressional Republicans to create conditions for a serious bipartisan agreement addressing the nation’s fiscal situation, but warned the GOP needed to be willing to compromise.
“But, you know, again it takes two to tango,” he said at an appearance at the Pete Peterson Fiscal Summit.
The fiscal situation is not the problem. The fiscal situation the symptom of the problem. The problem is weak economic growth and Republicans don't want any on Obama's watch.
- Everyone says U.S. fiscal policy is hurting the U.S. and the world. Because its true.
- The continuation of the Reaganomics regime is causing record high poverty.
- Is there anything to celebrate in the current economic environment? If you are rich, yes.
- Progressives, Liberals, and Democrats have to keep fighting for our people, the poor and the middle class. Even despite the seemingly immovable opposition of Republicans and most of our own party's leadership class (who are broadly in agreement on economic policy). No matter how much the bad news gets us down, we have to keep fighting. Okay? Good.