Surprise! The latest job numbers aren't as good as had been hoped/expected, and all of a sudden there's doom, gloom - and cheering from the Right Wing. What could be the matter? Why aren't things getting better?
Annie Lowery over at the New York Times has put together an article rounding up Some Dreary Forecasts From Recovery Skeptics.
Call them permabears. A solid six months of good and getting-better data — fewer Americans claiming unemployment benefits, rising industrial production and improving economic sentiment among them — have failed to convince them of the strength of the recovery.
Lowery presents it as a minority viewpoint, and it is good to finally hear something aside from the accepted wisdom of the Very Serious People. Although you think Lowery might also acknowledge the fact that the entire Republican Party and their owners have been screaming we're on the wrong track since day one, so doubts about the recovery are hardly unheard...
BUT.... if you read the article, you may come away from it with a nagging suspicion that a lot more has been left out. Something important.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
A brief digression. Aaron Williams is a cartoonist on the web with some wonderful story telling skills and art to match. One of his creations is Nodwick, a parody of a Dungeons & Dragons type world full of quests, monsters, magic, and some rather sardonic commentary on it all as told from the viewpoint of the titular henchman.
The Clue By Four is a recent story, a tale of a magical artifact left over from when the Gods got tired of dealing with really stupid humanity, and gave them a Tree of Cerebrostim-X to smarten them up. Alas, from the Gods point of view, it worked too well. The Gods dealt with the problem in typical God-like fashion - but something was salvaged from the charred remains. Wisdom is still available for humanity, if a bit painfully....
Ahem. Well anyway, back to Lowery.
If you read the article, you come away with the message that A) there is a small group of people who B) don't think the recovery is a strong as it should be and C) we could easily slip back into another recession. Now if you want to create an impression that things aren't going well, and maybe the economic policies currently in place aren't doing the job, well mission accomplished.
WHY someone would want to create that impression is a question one can only speculate about. Is the intent to reinforce a narrative, provide support for those who want different policies - and different people in charge of them? Is it simply to make people fearful? Who benefits from creating this impression?
The reason to speculate about this is because of all the things that are NOT in the article, as in:
1) Why are the people/groups cited considered a minority?
2) Why are their predictions different from the rest of the economic/business world?
3) What do they think has been wrong about the policies being implemented?
4) What (and this is the key question) would they do differently?
If you go back and read the article again with those questions in mind, you find Lowery really doesn't address them at all. Sure there's some mention of lack of disposable income, warm weather hiring anomalies, gas prices, Europe, etc. as reasons why the economy seems to have hit a bump, but it's all very superficial.
We've heard about stenography journalism, which is he said-she said verbatim parroting, without questioning or analysis. Think of the above as shovel journalism: dig up some stuff and shove it into a pile. "Here are some facts. They seem to fit together, but I really haven't thought all that hard about them, how they connect to each other, or the larger context you need to really understand what they mean. They are just facts."
And then there's the BIG QUESTION. If you're going to write an article about recovery skeptics, where the HELL is Paul Krugman? Krugman has been warning for years now that the recovery was weaker than it should be, and explaining at great length why. He goes into depth; he names names and cites facts. He lays out what's going wrong and what should be done. To write an article like this and NOT mention Krugman is just egregious.
It might also be useful to mention some other concerns about the weakness in the recovery, to wit:
1) Republicans have been trying to block recovery ever since Obama was elected, for purely political purposes.
2) There are powerful economic interests with big incentives to keep things as they are; the 1% has done extremely well the way things are going.
3) The economic policies embraced by Conservatives are recipes for disaster; they will make problems worse, not better. And they don't think they go far enough!
4) Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran - need I say more?
5) The unreasoning worship of Austerity - despite what it's doing to Europe.
Need I go on? If you just go through Paul Krugman's blog posts and columns for the last 2 years, you can find tons of material discussing the recovery, what would happen, and why. You'll also find lots of discussion why these views and policies have been relegated to minority status despite the track record of data, analyses and predictions backing them over the delusions of the Very Serious People.
What we really need right now is to send Paul Krugman on tour with the Clue By Four. The only problem is where to start: in the White House (which finally seems to be getting it), Congress, or the media. There's not a lot of time left till November.
7:54 AM PT: UPDATE - Something apropos from Jared Bernstein, via Digby.
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/...