It’s too damned late on so many fronts …

I really try not to do late, wonky economic posts on any night, let alone a Saturday night.  It’s probably because I’m deep in the midst of writing a monetary policy paper that I’m even remotely in the mode of doing stuff like this right now, but really, it seems like this discussion is coming late on all fronts. It’s late for the jobless.  It’s late for the businesses who don’t have customers. It’s late for economists who can’t figure out why everything they’ve learned over the last 70 years is being suddenly ignored.  I personally can’t believe the NYT is reporting that there’s a debate in the White House on the necessity of doing something other than seeking bipartisan surrender.  Their internal polling must be worse than we think.

As the economy worsens, President Obama and his senior aides are considering whether to adopt a more combative approach on economic issues, seeking to highlight substantive differences with Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail rather than continuing to pursue elusive compromises, advisers to the president say.

Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Plouffe, and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, want him to maintain a pragmatic strategy of appealing to independent voters by advocating ideas that can pass Congress, even if they may not have much economic impact. These include free trade agreements and improved patent protections for inventors.

But others, including Gene Sperling, Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, say public anger over the debt ceiling debate has weakened Republicans and created an opening for bigger ideas like tax incentives for businesses that hire more workers, according to Congressional Democrats who share that view. Democrats are also pushing the White House to help homeowners facing foreclosure.

I simply highlighted the ideas that are wrong, wrong, wrong and now we know where they are coming from.  How much domestic economic boost can you get from free trade agreements, improved patent protections for inventors, and yet MORE tax incentives for businesses to hire more workers when they have very few customers?  The answer is little to none. I’ll be generous and say a smidgin.  If Daley, Plouffe or Sperling were economists we wouldn’t even be seeing these STUPID ideas.

Why on earth would any Democratic President want to compromise with the absolutely wrong voices in the GOP that are basically supporting economic policy that’s custom made to tank the US economy during his re-election cycle?  These idiots have to believe the aforementioned crap.  That’s the only excuse that I can come up with.

The boasts of Congressional Republicans about their cost-cutting victories are ringing hollow to some well-known economists, financial analysts and corporate leaders, including some Republicans, who are expressing increasing alarm over Washington’s new austerity and antitax orthodoxy.

Their critiques have grown sharper since last week, when President Obama signed his deficit reduction deal with Republicans and, a few days later, when Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States.

But even before that, macroeconomists and private sector forecasters were warning that the direction in which the new House Republican majority had pushed the White House and Congress this year — for immediate spending cuts, no further stimulus measures and no tax increases, ever — was wrong for addressing the nation’s two main ills, a weak economy now and projections of unsustainably high federal debt in coming years.

Instead, these critics say, Washington should be focusing on stimulating the economy in the near term to induce people to spend money and create jobs, while settling on a long-term plan for spending cuts and tax increases to take effect only after the economy recovers.

The absolute lack of a knowledgeable voice on fiscal policy these days in policy circles that matter absolutely boggles my mind.  We can argue the fine points of whether focused tax cuts or spending initiatives are required to jump start aggregate demand and create customers with jobs but really, that’s about the extent of the controversy between economists, financiers, and people that know what they’re doing.

“I think the U.S. has every chance of having a good year next year, but the politicians are doing their damnedest to prevent it from happening — the Republicans are — and the Democrats to my eternal bafflement have not stood their ground,” Ian C. Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, a research firm, said in an interview.

Yup, exactly so.

Steve Benen further points to the absolute ignorance that rules the media punditry that some how gets to this kind of coverage on simple economic and finance theory:

Journalistic standards and modern political norms place some restrictions on what a reporter can and will say in a news article. It’s what too often leads to unhelpful he-said-she-said reporting (“Eric Cantor today said two plus two equals five; Democrats and mathematicians disagreed”).

Yup, people can say bat-shit crazy, impossibly false things and it still gets reported as just some one’s opinion.  Further more, FOX news will drag on at least five republican politicians that will insist that 2+2=5 and there’s a liberal media bias and that’s the only reason there could be any different answer.  It’s enough to make a financial economist drink. Okay, I keep writing rants these days.  I’m going to take a late bath with a late nightcap.  Hopefully, you’re all in the middle of some sweet dreams.