The Upcoming Lost Decade

As the White House frets about the national debt, Paul Krugman warns that by not stimulating the economy further now, the risk is that the economy will stall out and we will experience a lost decade, as did the Japanese ten to twenty years ago.

I don't know who is right. But I think that I would be far more inclined to trust Paul Krugman over the collection of greedheads on Wall Street who were largely responsible for this current mess.

Inflation may be a future concern, but right now we have a public unemployment rate of 10.2% and a real-world unemployment/underemployment rate that is probably double that, if not higher. People who are nearing retirement age are not planning to retire, not because they like working, but because those fuckers on Wall Street wrecked all of the pension plans. Kids coming out of school are facing the bleakest job market in seventy years and many of them are coming out of school with significant debt burdens that are not going to be paid off by working in the food service industries.

Worrying about future deficits during a severe recession (or a depression) is foolish. That is akin to not putting enough water onto a house fire because you're worried about how difficult it will be to pump out the cellar.