akirlu | Entries tagged with economy

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For anyone interested in a smart (and to my mind, entirely plausible) account of what missteps (dating back to the Reagan administration) brought us to this ... no, I can't say low point, we're still plummeting ... extended crisis, how about that? ... in the US economy and financial sector, you could do a lot worse than reading Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz's piece in Vanity Fair: Capitalist Fools.

Meanwhile, the question was asked just a couple of days ago, whether Rod Blagojavich was merely stupid, or plain crazy. I'm now tempted to ask the same question of the Senate Republican caucus.

So Krugman and Atrios and various other real economist-types are worrying today about the Federal government not being able to find enough shovel-ready infrastructure projects to spendstimulus money on so that the money gets spent immediately and the stimulus gets felt ditto. Well, here's an infrastructure job I haven't seen mentioned yet: how about we rebuild New Orleans? For that matter, how about we clean up the Texas coast in the wake of Hurricane Ike? Plus whatever other recovery projects are still on FEMA's books for that matter?

It seems to me that we could spend a whole bunch of money on projects that are already pending if we could just unblock the flow of funding and approvals that's constipating FEMA.

First they'd have to get their thumb out, though.