In case of emergency, break into FUD

Krugman’s NYT piece indicates it will be “disaster” if the Republicans take Congress because nothing will get done and NOW is the time to ACT ACT ACT!!!!

The economy, weighed down by the debt that households ran up during the Bush-era bubble, is in dire straits; deflation, not inflation, is the clear and present danger. And it’s not at all clear that the Fed has the tools to head off this danger.

How conveniently he forgets that Pelosi held the purse strings for 2 of the 6 years in the “Bush era” and has tripled the debt in 1/3 rd the amount of time it took Bush to build it to where it was when he left. I don’t love either of them for it – but let’s share the blame where blame should go, no?

I think the Fed has tools in place – Geithner certainly is a tool – perhaps not the one we need, but he certainly is one.

Krugman ends with:

Right now we very much need active policies on the part of the federal government to get us out of our economic trap

I think the voters are putting Republicans IN Congrees to stop all the active policies that do not appear to be helping, and might very well be rusting the economic trap shut completely….

I’m not in love with the idea of a stalled government – because I do not believe Obama has it in him to tack right like Clinton, he won’t compromise and will veto everything he can, relying instead on WH issued edicts. Obama thinks he’s right, and the voters are wrong (except when they elected him).

As Krauthammer says

Over the next two years, the real action will be not in Congress but in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy. Democrats will advance their agenda on Obamacare, financial reform and energy by means of administrative regulation, such as carbon-emission limits imposed unilaterally by the Environmental Protection Agency

That said, what I’m reading tells me the voters would rather have the brakes applied than continue careening over the cliff they believe they see…

UPDATE: Pirates Cove also notes the unhinging of the Nobel Laureates….