It's the Economists, Stupid!

from Huffington Post by Jane Smiley

The lead article at Slate today is about how American corporate managers have become the laughingstock of the world because they can no longer manage "complex systems" as they were once famous for doing.

If you want to read it, you can go to the link, but really, I thought, what's so hard to understand? The economy we have, with all its volatility, is exactly the economy any sane person would have predicted after the wholesale decline of regulation, as both a reality and an idea, in the eighties and nineties. And who has kept up the drumbeat for deregulation, not only here but everywhere, if not those screwy, and tenured, free-market economists? Their whole job for the last thirty years has been to prop up the egomania and greed of corporate CEOs by making that greed and egomania look both positive and unavoidable. As a result, the gambling side of capitalism has driven every other side away, to a chorus of bleats from the left that, Gosh, something big and bad was bound to happen, and an accompanying chorus from the right that even saying such a thing was treason.

Let's review.

Review the rest after the click ...

Riffing on the same theme, the New York Times did a little fact-checking against Bush's most recent speech:

Through Bush-Colored Glasses

Mr. Bush said he was optimistic because the economy’s “foundation is solid” as measured by employment, wages, productivity, exports and the federal deficit. He was wrong on every count. On some, he has been wrong for quite a while.

Mr. Bush boasted about 52 consecutive months of job growth during his presidency. What matters is the magnitude of growth, not ticks on a calendar. The economic expansion under Mr. Bush — which it is safe to assume is now over — produced job growth of 4.2 percent. That is the worst performance over a business cycle since the government started keeping track in 1945.

Mr. Bush also talked approvingly of the recent unemployment rate of 4.8 percent. A low rate is good news when it indicates a robust job market. The unemployment rate ticked down last month because hundreds of thousands of people dropped out of the work force altogether. Worse, long-term unemployment, of six months or more, hit 17.5 percent. We’d expect that in the depths of a recession. It is unprecedented at the onset of one.

Mr. Bush was wrong to say wages are rising. On Friday morning, the day he spoke, the government reported that wages failed to outpace inflation in February, for the fifth straight month. Productivity growth has also weakened markedly in the past two years, a harbinger of a lower overall standard of living for Americans.

Check some more facts after the click ...