Speaking the Truth

Here is a post by Dean Baker on his Beat The Press blog:

President Obama Wants Credit for Avoiding a Great Depression: Where Is the Ridicule?

In its top of the hour news segment NPR reported that President Obama hoped that voters would give him credit for avoiding a second Great Depression. If this is an accurate representation of what President Obama said then it should have devoted a segment to economists ridiculing the president for trying to set an unbelievably low bar for measuring the success of his economic policy.

The first Great Depression was the result of a decade of inadequate policy responses. The massive spending associated with World War II that eventually got us out of the Great Depression could have been undertaken a decade sooner, if there had been political will.

There was nothing about the financial crisis at the beginning of President Obama's term that could have condemned the country to decade of double-digit unemployment. This only could have happened if Congress failed to respond adequately to a financial collapse.

The above should be supplemented by reading Paul Krugman's comments on the fate of democracy given the current depression.