Mark Thoma, Economist Who Pushed For Jobs Bills, Gives Up - Dan Froomkin/HuffPo

Mark Thoma, Economist Who Pushed For Jobs Bills, Gives Up
Dan Froomkin
First Posted: 04- 6-10 05:00 PM | Updated: 04- 6-10 06:06 PM

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Mark Thoma, an economics professor at the University of Oregon who has long urged Congress to take aggressive steps to reduce unemployment, announced today on his influential blog that he is giving up.

"I've been pushing hard for more help for labor markets for quite awhile," he wrote, "but it's probably time for me to give up and accept that we are going to have a slower recovery than we could have had with more aggressive fiscal policy."

Thoma told HuffPost that what drove him over the edge was a blog post yesterday by Harvard economist Jeff Frankel, declaring the recession over.

With that excuse, "Congress is not going to provide anything more than token help from here forward," Thoma wrote.

Thoma is one of several economists who called for aggressive fiscal policy early and often to get us out of the recession. "Fiscal policy creates demand directly, it does not rely upon incentives and the hope that people will respond to them. When the crisis hit, we needed fiscal policy right away," he wrote.

Congress did finally pass a stimulus bill last February, but that was too little too late, says Thoma.

And now, even if a slow recovery is underway, more stimulus funds could speed it up. "Instead of getting back to full employment by, say, 2013, we could get there sooner if we act now." Thoma drew a picture:



"Why settle for the blue line recovery when the green line is possible?" he asked.

But no. "I'll still complain -- there's no reason to let policymakers off the hook -- but it's time to give up the hope that anything more will be done to help the unemployed find jobs."

Fellow economic blogger Brad DeLong noted Thoma's post approvingly: "He is, of course, right," DeLong wrote. "There is right now a stunning disconnect between an Obama administration that says that unemployment is and will for a long time remain unacceptably high and an Obama administration that is not pushing for policies to boost jobs on the scale needed in a continent-spanning economy."

Job-creation advocates have long been saying that the Obama administration and Congress just don't get it.

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More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/06/mark-thoma-economist-who_n_527537.html

:banghead:

:wtf:

I am astounded by how many there are in this country.

Those that truly know, are studiously ignored.

Looks like we got the Status and the Quo instead.

:beer:

:puke:

:argh: