because, er… he says so:
“Today, everybody agrees that the recession is over, and the question is what the pace of the expansion is going to be,” Summers said on ABC.
You would think Larry’s trying to sell you something, and you would not be wrong,
The White House’s optimism comes after a week of activity by the president and Democrats to improve the economy.
“A week of activity by the president and Democrats to improve the economy”? You mean, by the same folks who have tripled the national debt and crippling small businesses?
Last Tuesday, the Obama administration announced it was extending the Troubled Asset Relief Program until October 2010 in an attempt to free up credit for small businesses to expand and for homeowners to secure their mortgages through the administration’s housing program.
On Friday, the White House’s pay czar, Ken Feinberg, released new rulings on the pay packages for some of the highest-paid employees at companies receiving what the administration deems “exceptional assistance” from the government.
Also on Friday, House Democrats passed financial reform legislation to tighten federal regulation of Wall Street, and create an agency to protect consumers from abusive lending practices, a fund to help failing banks and new rules for the trading of some of the financial instruments that helped cause the crisis.
Summers tied the president’s health-care overhaul to efforts to reduce the federal deficit.
Yup,
- more TARP
- more bad mortgages since the Community Reinvestment Act is not only still law but is being expanded
- more government intervention on private industry
- more budget-busting in the form of a national healthcare bill
That’s why Larry thinks the recession is over.
Tim Cavanaugh is skeptical, to put it mildly,
The transportation services index is still tanking. (Zzzz!) Unemployment continues to exceed expectations. (Better luck next time, suckers!) Is the recession really over? Can something this magical just up and runnoft?
Go ask the unemployed.
I’m betting on inflation.
So he’s either a drooling idiot or a liar. I’m betting liar.
“So he’s either a drooling idiot or a liar. I’m betting liar.”
Actually, Larry is both drooling idiot and liar simultaneously. Aside from his infamous theories about women’s deficiencies in the sciences, mathematics, engineering, et al when at Harvard, Mr. Summers has a long history of idiocy. He is perhaps best known for giving the Russians catastrophically bad advice on transitioning to a market economy.
Try this article highlighting Larry’s many lowlights…
http://www.minnpost.com/steveperry/2009/04/07/7898/larry_summers_greatest_hits
“Looting Russia. In the early 1990s, Summers was a key figure in the so-called Harvard Boys group that did so much to convert Russia from a stodgy, collectivist command economy into a kleptocrat’s wet dream of privatization and profiteering. As Mark Ames wrote in the Nation last year, “[b]y the end of the 1990s, Russia’s GDP had collapsed by more than 60 percent, its population was suffering the worst death-to-birth ratio of any industrialized nation in the twentieth century, and the financial markets that Summers and [his protege Andrei] Schleifer helped create had collapsed in what was then the world’s biggest debt default ever.”
> “So he’s either a drooling idiot or a liar. I’m betting liar.”
I’m betting on magical thinking, so it’s option “A” for me.
“Just cover your eyes and WISH it away!”
> had collapsed in what was then the world’s biggest debt default ever.
We’re working on topping that by a large margin.