Suppose you had spent the last five years actually believing what you read from the usual suspects — the WSJ opinion pages, National Review, right-wing economists, etc.. Here’s what would have happened:
In 2006 you would have believed that there was no housing bubble.
In 2007 you would have believed that the troubles of subprime couldn’t possibly spread to the financial system as a whole.
In 2008 you would have believed that we weren’t in a recession — and that the failure of Lehman was unlikely to have bad consequences for the real economy.
In 2009 you would have believed that high inflation was just around the corner.
At the beginning of 2010 you would have believed that sky-high interest rates were just around the corner.
Now, we all make mistakes and get things wrong — although it’s striking how often the trolls on this blog feel the need to accuse yours truly of saying things I didn’t. But after this string of errors, wouldn’t you at least begin to suspect that the people you find congenial have a fundamentally wrong-headed view of how the world works?
Man has a point. The larger issue is that the same people who got us into this massive economic hole are still basically in charge, especially on the financial industry side. Other than Bernie Madoff, who's actually been punished for costing us trillions in bailout cash?
Sure, we're eager to go collect some heads of politicians...but what about the banksters who caused the problem in the first place? What about the Village press that enabled them (also largely owned by the banksters)?
How do we hold them accountable? Because these guys have been wrong time and time again, and we're still making economic policy based on them being wrong.
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