The Crisis of No Crisis: The Post-Recession Blues

The celebration of the recovery is a little premature, but it reflects the reality that most financial pundits and reporters have only two settings regardless of the economic conditions.  One might be called the Jim Cramer setting, where we are told that talk of recession is nonsense and that we should keep buying.  The second might be called the Nouriel Roubini setting, where we are told that things are much worse than we think.  Accordingly, first the recession itself, and later the overstated claims about how bad it was going to be, have discredited most of the financial punditry.

 

Looking Backward-McCain Style

The Republican campaign has collapsed among a sordid and backward looking combination of incompetence, red-baiting that feels bizarrely anachronistic and almost quaint, the growing acceptance among many in the Republican establishment that Sarah Palin is about as qualified to be president as I am to play first base for the Yankees, an adolescent, but deeply disturbing attempt to fake a racially charged attack on a McCain supporter, attempts to suggest that the Democratic president is a supporter of terrorism essentially because he has an unusual name and through ugly anti-Muslim bigotry. Lastly, the dreaded October surprise that many Democrats feared would turn this election upside down and defeat Obama turned out to be a shopping spree in which Republican handlers bought Sarah Palin $150,000 worth of clothes and makeup.