Where do you get off, you sick little twist? Sexual? I'm not sexual with them. I'm not abusive with them, how dare you write that in your paper without knowing nothing about me, biting's not sex, it's biting! I'm not sick like that. Maybe I should come bite you, would you like that, scotty? I bet you would like that, I am right? You write about me like I'm sick. You're the sick one, you know that? Is that why you like me, scotty? Is that why? I could come bite you; you tell me how sexual it is. You humiliate me like that? You mortify me like that in front of my father? My father's father? Listen to me, smack daddy, crack daddy, little baby whack daddy, here's what's happening. You ain't never going to find them anymore. You aint never gonna see them no more. I'm sending you something right now, You take a good look at this guy, because you ain't ver going to see him no more.

The problem is, everyone has an opinion, but it's impossible to know who is right.

As Obama sort of indicates, it doesn't matter what advice people give him, he's got to make a decision, and soon, and that decision will not match most of the advice he gets. Arguing over whether he followed your advice is posturing, not working towards a solution.

Okay, aside from the sick spam from Sophocles above, this is a good post, Steve.

I really hope Krugman heeds the call and comes forth with a concrete plan to help the economy. I honestly think Obama will listen to it. (He specifically called him out for this challenge today on all the T.V. major networks).

I really hope Krugman can come up with a viable and specific suggestion-- and not just more esoteric whining.

I say the ball is in Krugman's court now.

A guy made a good comment at TPM. We still have $350 billion of stimulus in the original TARP package that is being reworked to add to the $800 billion.

Ezra: "Obama responded to this by saying that some people say that the bill is too large and some say the bill is too small. Okay. Who's right? Why? $800 billion is a specific number. Why are we using that number rather than $1.2 trillion, or $500 billion?..."

Contrary to Ezra's comments, Obama is right to focus on the how first and then return to the how much later.

In fact, a dollar spent on a road will have a different economic impact than a dollar lost to a tax cut for Bill Gates...which would have a different economic impact than a dollar spent on extended unemployment benefits.

So, the question isn't how much money do we need to spend? The question is, how can we create 3 million jobs (and growing) while getting the most bang for our buck? How much we spend is a function of how we spend--which has yet to be determined.

I agree that the ball is in Krugman's court. I am tired of his lobbing criticism over the fence. Time to put up some specifics.

I think Obama's approach is still evolving. People act like there is a clear "right answer" that some expert has. This is largely uncharted territory and the politics are particularly strange (see E.J. Dionne's editorial today).

Still, its clear that though no one really knows how much stimulus and what mix of stimulus is just right, there are many who think they do and are not approaching their advice with at least a tinge of respect and acknowledgement that its something of an educated guess.

- Here is link to EJ Dionne today
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/08/AR2009010803030.html

It is SO refreshing to have a leader acting like an adult. Obama has it just right. If someone thinks they have a good idea, then put it on the table. But once it is one the table, stop owning it. Let it be evaluated on its merits. The ideas that appear to have the greatest potential benefit will be used and the rest discarded. Don't get caught up in personal ownership of the ideas. THIS is the way forward.

You guys are missing the brilliance of this move. Now I am not prone to making grand pronouncements about Obama or making excuses for him either. I believe you judge a guy on what he does not what he is going to do. But having said that I think I can see clearly where this is going. Notice where much of the "dissent" is coming from in the Dem Caucus. Mostly people who backed Obama in the election and worked to help him get elected. What does that mean? Try this on for size

Obama sends a bill to congress thats just a little less than 800 billion with 300 billion in tax cuts. Now mind you he has wanted to put in those tax cuts all along as he said on the campaign trail. So what has the discussion become now? He is using too much of the 800 billion on tax cuts. Now what do you think the fix to that is? RAISE THE LEVEL OF STIMULUS. The Republicans can barely afford not to back a plan that has 300 billion in tax cuts in it. But now when Obama raises the stimulus to over a trillion because the Dems/Krugman are "unhappy" with the initial spending levels everybody ends up happy and we get what we need to stimulate the economy. And Obama comes away looking somewhat conservative and a guy who "just listened to all sides".

Like I said I can't say thats written in stone and normally I don't make these kinds of predictions but this looks pretty straight forward to me. I even thought I saw a hint of a smile when he was asked the question about Krugman today.

Even though Krugman perhaps he's been specific enough, this is a special window of opportunity to speak directly and specifically to the President-Elect, who has essentially INVITED him to do so!

Wow--
He'd be insane to not at least try to be clearer and more direct with Obama re: his Economic Vision at this juncture.

It may actually make a huge difference (or it may not).

What does Krugman have to lose?

The point I thought Obama was trying to make, but he never quite said it in the video linked, is that it's one thing to say "spend more money", but you have to spend money on something worthwhile that's going to stimulate the economy. If you tack on 200 billion just to do it, you just wasted that chance to spend the money on something real and lasting.

What CJ said, basically.

If you take ideology off the table, how do you make decisions in the absence of conclusive empirical evidence? Guess? "Go with your gut?" (And what is "going with your gut" if your gut is uninformed by ideology?).

We know the conservative approach to the economy has led to disaster, not once, but twice in the last 80 years. Is it "partisanship" or ideology mongering to point that out? And if that plain fact can't be part of the discussion because it's too ideological or partisan, what in the hell kind of discussion are you going to have about the economy? Any data points you can use to start making judgments about what works and what doesn't are excluded, so you end up where Obama is now, counting the noses of who says what and choosing the middle point -- despite the fact that many of people you are counting on one side of the argument have a long track record of being wrong. Obama, frankly, is starting to sound like someone who doesn't have a good grasp of things, someone who doesn't trust his own judgment, just when people are looking for strong, decisive leadership. FDR didn't count noses -- he fucking led. He made mistakes, but he fucking led. He made enemies, but he fucking led. He didn't cringe, and duck, and worry about what the Republicans -- then, like now, thoroughly discredited -- thought, he fucking led.

All this nonsense about bipartisanship, when the Republicans have absolutely no intellectual capital to bring to the table -- what's the point? Obama was elected because the Republicans fucked everything up, and people want him to fix things. Why on earth would he refuse to proceed unless the Republicans agree with what he does first? It makes no sense. It's like putting the village idiot on the town council and refusing to take any action when the town is on fire unless he ratifies it first.

Ezra does not raise a good point. In fact he misses the point entirely. And Steve if you get caught up in the same insanity it shows that your level of awareness of reality is about the same as the average republican congressman. Time to wake up and smell the coffee here. We're in trouble here and it's time for action not squabbling like a flock of vultures fighting over a carcass.

There is no exact dollar amount and there is no exact roadmap for this plan to repair the economy. I have to say that the news bloggers are trending toward basing their articles on negativity and "Why doesn't Obama......?" to keep interest alive. Sort of the equivalent to corporate news hackery to bolster ratings.

mg,

I see your points and somewhat agree, but there is a time to make decisions and there is a time time to put all the ideas on the table. I see this as the latter. Very soon, Obama and his team will be (and probably already are) making policy decisions for economic recovery. But the brilliance of his posture right now is that he comes off as a rational guy willing to listen to people. And to some extent, I'm sure he really does listen, but to assume that he is not informed by a progressive set of principles, that he is somehow only following his gut instict, I think underestimates Obama. Let's let the guy take the oath of office before we string him up for not being a principled progressive. Let's see what he actually DOES first.

Obama is absolutely right that the distribution of the stimulus monies has to be sniper-precise vis-a-vis return rather than scattershot-and-hope. Not just because of the amounts involved but because, due to the *global* downturn, a new issue may be arising.

Until now, all we had to worry about is "where we're going to get the money to pay back the interest and the principal?". Now, it also looks like we'll have to worry about "where's the money going to come from for the stimulus, of whatever size?". China, for one, seems to be less inclined to keep lending...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/business/worldbusiness/08yuan.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=China%20Losing%20Taste%20for%20Debt%20From%20the%20US&st=cse

Too much fear-mongering is a bad idea, IMO; too much fear-mongering, especially when taken out of historic context, risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hi:

I have an idea for a stimulus package item that could be a self-funding program. It isn't original with me, I heard an MIT engineer talk about it recently, and haven't heard anyone else push it, so I thought I would pass it around.

In a nutshell, he recommended instituting a variable tax on transportation fuels, higher when the fuels are less expensive and lower when they go up, to create a price floor that's just uncomfortable enough to deter travel by auto.

Then use the funds raised by that tax along with stimulus package monies to create a combination of light-rail intra-urban transit and hi-speed inter-urban rail transit. Pay Ford, GM and Chrysler to build the rail cars, thus providing thousands of manufacturing jobs in places hardest hit.

Why should the USA be the only country in the world without hi-speed rail and universal light-rail urban transit systems? Every civilized country (except us!) has rail systems that make owning a car optional for a high percentage of their population. That percentage might still be lower here, but it wouldn't be zero, and even if you needed a car locally, you wouldn't use it as much in town or for long-distance travel.

Also, we wouldn't be without options if we had to ground the airline fleet again, like we were back in the awful days after 9/11. You might take a couple of days getting cross-country, but you wouldn't be driving a rental car either!

There's a lot of good reasons this idea makes sense, and not many I can think of that make it sound like a bad one. Just sayin', you know?

JR

JR --
Believe me I am an advocate of mass transportation but comparing the US to Europe is a little dangerous...our country is huge, making some of the issues a little different than for, say, France or Italy where you can traverse the whole country in 3-4 hours by rail.

I do agree however that the metro areas around cities would be wonderful to develop for use of trains. We should just about ban the use of autos within cities...

Believe me I am an advocate of mass transportation but comparing the US to Europe is a little dangerous...our country is huge, making some of the issues a little different than for, say, France or Italy where you can traverse the whole country in 3-4 hours by rail.

Our country is bigger than any country in Europe (at least, any that is wholly in Europe), but that has nothing to do with the feasibility of rail in the US vs. that on the European continent.

The reason rail doesn't work as easily here is because, as a direct result of the auto companies efforts (often, though not entirely, with the aid of governments that were in their pockets), the US has spent most of the 20th century and all of the 21st century, so far, systematically designing communities to reinforce the primacy of the automobile.

Okay, as shameless as this may sound; I love our new President!

[...] France or Italy where you can traverse the whole country in 3-4 hours by rail. --Elie, @19:22

Have never been to France, so can't say but, as for traversing the whole of Italy in 3-4 hrs... Maybe at the ankle of the boot. *Maybe*. But, up or down the boot? You have to be joking. Getting up from Venice to the Austrian border took *hours* (and *hours*); it was enough for our 2yr old to contract and develop a cold (we finished the trip back to Warsaw by plane because of that).

Even tiny Holland (the Netherlands) takes longer than that to travel *across*, though it does feel that, travelling from Utrecht to Amsterdam, you barely have the time to visit the loo before you reach your destination.