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Seven things about the economy that everyone should be more worried about than they are
Hanrahan's "Reporting the Collapse" below
An extraordinary series of articles recently appeared on the Nieman Watchdog Web site, anchored by John Hanrahan and mostly based on interviews with some of the nation's most perceptive, prescient and prophetic economists. The series laid out a broad landscape of economic issues that have been largely overlooked during the reporting of the nation’s economic collapse -- to our great peril.
Hanrahan’s articles explore key elements of the story that reporters should have been -- and should still be -- writing about. Among them: The endemic fraud at the heart of the collapse, the resultant need for a comprehensive dissection of some key financial institutions, how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have weakened the economy, the dramatic effects of the crash on domestic poverty and world poverty, and underlying it all, the critically important role of government spending in a recovery, be it through a second stimulus or expanded entitlements or jobs programs, all of which requires that deficits be seen, for the short run at least, as the solution, not the problem.
As a coda to Hanrahan’s series, here is a list of seven things all of us should be more alarmed by than we currently are, going forward.
A common theme underlying them all is that while our leaders -- and the voices of conventional wisdom -- treat our current recession as cyclical in nature, and are essentially mostly just waiting around for growth to pick up again, there is plenty of reason to believe that this crisis was instead an expression of structural problems. And if that is so, and we don’t take the proper action, then the wait could be a long one.
No. 1: The middle class may never be the same again
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No. 2: The recovery could take a really long time
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No. 3: The recovery could only be temporary
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No. 4: Then what? This time, we don’t have the tools to get out of a recession
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No. 5: The ‘very serious’ people in Washington are still obsessed about the deficit
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No. 6: Whatever is making the stock market go up could go away
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No. 7: The hugely irresponsible financial sector remains unchastened
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Hanrahan’s articles explore key elements of the story that reporters should have been -- and should still be -- writing about. Among them: The endemic fraud at the heart of the collapse, the resultant need for a comprehensive dissection of some key financial institutions, how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have weakened the economy, the dramatic effects of the crash on domestic poverty and world poverty, and underlying it all, the critically important role of government spending in a recovery, be it through a second stimulus or expanded entitlements or jobs programs, all of which requires that deficits be seen, for the short run at least, as the solution, not the problem.
As a coda to Hanrahan’s series, here is a list of seven things all of us should be more alarmed by than we currently are, going forward.
A common theme underlying them all is that while our leaders -- and the voices of conventional wisdom -- treat our current recession as cyclical in nature, and are essentially mostly just waiting around for growth to pick up again, there is plenty of reason to believe that this crisis was instead an expression of structural problems. And if that is so, and we don’t take the proper action, then the wait could be a long one.
No. 1: The middle class may never be the same again
.
.
.
.
.
No. 2: The recovery could take a really long time
.
.
.
.
.
.
No. 3: The recovery could only be temporary
.
.
.
.
.
.
No. 4: Then what? This time, we don’t have the tools to get out of a recession
.
.
.
.
.
No. 5: The ‘very serious’ people in Washington are still obsessed about the deficit
.
.
.
.
.
.
No. 6: Whatever is making the stock market go up could go away
.
.
.
.
.
No. 7: The hugely irresponsible financial sector remains unchastened
.
.
.
.
.
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