what a mess...

From the front page of today's C-J, a mess caused by two authors, an editor, a President and his Democratic Congress...

The C-J decided to run an AP story by Nancy Benac and Calvin Woodward. (Sedition.com blows up the pair with an R-rated rant entitled "Nancy Benac and Calvin Woodward, the worst journalists in the world? Or just America?")

The headline in the print edition gets things off to a tepid start: "Passed recovery plan a fundamental shift: No New Deal, it's still far cry from status quo". (The website has the more modest and accurate title: "The recovery plan: A national jolt to economy".)

America is bringing shock and awe to the home front, using dollars instead of bombs.

It's weird to invoke "shock and awe"-- one failed policy to favorably describe another. It's also odd (but somewhat accurate) to describe government's activity-- here and in war-- as destructive (and to applaud it).

It's the military doctrine of lightning force - fast and brute, or as brute as the shaken country can manage - applied to the campaign for economic recovery.

Huh?
Lightning?! Not quite.
Force? Yep.
Fast? Nope.
Brute? I guess so.
As brute as we can manage? I hope so.

With a record-busting stimulus plan, the U.S. is marshaling resources against economic catastrophe in ways not seen since Franklin Roosevelt put the New Deal in motion....

True, except it is far more likely to engender economic catastrophe, in an economy that is probably no worse than what we faced in the early 1980s.

The success of the stimulus package may be measured less by visible achievements than by what does not happen - the home that is not foreclosed, the family that doesn't slip into poverty, the disease that does not go undiagnosed.

There are other unseens-- for example, the opportunity costs of the dollars not forcibly diverted and the necessary undermining of consumer confidence (started 15 months ago by Bush and the Democratic Congress).

"The stakes are so high now, this is such a big bill, average Americans are following it," says Princeton historian Julian Zelizer. "It's become a bill that is an argument about what government can or can't do.

"If there is no effect and in six months we are talking about the same economy or a worse economy, I think it would be a devastating blow to the president, Democrats, and to liberal claims about what government can do."...

An excellent observation...If the economy recovers, it will be in spite of-- not because of-- this package. It's an interesting gamble: will Obama get to claim causation for correlation or will his policy make things worse in the short-term as well as the long-term?

The stimulus wasn't just about throwing cash at the economy, though. The package is filled with billions for some of the same goals that Obama preached about on the presidential campaign trail...

Smart although deceptive politics-- at least short-term. Not helpful in terms of economics-- or probably, political economy.

In 1936, The Economist magazine pronounced the New Deal a "striking success" in improving conditions that existed when FDR took office three years earlier.

What were they saying in 1938? And if the New Deal was a striking success, why did it last into the 1940s?