The Counterfeit Recovery

President Reagan once famously quipped that everyone who supports abortion has already been born. In the same vein it is worth noting that all the policymakers who don’t think we should worry about 9.6 percent unemployment have jobs.

This simple fact cannot be repeated enough times because it explains a huge amount about current economic policy. For the tens of millions of people who are unemployed, underemployed, or have given up looking for work altogether, we are in a crisis. The economy is an absolute disaster, ruining their lives and also jeopardizing the futures of their children and grandchildren.

But that is not the way that the people paid to contemplate economic policy in Washington see things. This gang is busy congratulating themselves because things could have been worse. They point out that if they had been even more incompetent that we could be in a second Great Depression with unemployment staying in the double digits for a decade.

Instead of worrying about the millions of unemployed workers today, they are worried about their deficit projections for the years 2018, 2020 or even 2025. This crew, which could not even see the $8 trillion housing bubble that was about to wreck the economy, wants the whole country to genuflect before their projections of deficits for 10 or 15 years into the future. This situation really would be funny if it did not lead to so much unnecessary suffering...

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