Paul Krugman predicts, accurately, that establishment media will blame any Democratic losses this fall on “liberal overreach”. This criticism generally takes two forms: (1) accusations of unAmerican soshulism (sometimes more politely phrased) by right-wing pundits and (2) hand-wringing about the debt from center and “left-center” pundits.
I understand (1) perfectly well, but why (2)? Why has establishment media generally decided that debt is the worst problem ever? Where does this come from?
I honestly don’t know.
cleek
from the same place every stupid media meme comes from: professional wingnuts and their paid experts who push the story every chance they get.
4 out of 5 wingnut economists surveyed recommend belt-tightening as the cure for whatever ails your economy.
DougJ
@cleek:
But how did it become establishment media consensus?
The Moar You Know
Easy peasy. It’s the only argument left against a massive shot of government money into the economy, one that this country desperately needs – and one, incidentally, that the GOP cannot allow as it would ensure that Obama’s presidency goes down in history as a success.
The “establishment media” shares most of the concerns of the GOP and their main sponsor, the National Chamber of Commerce. They are, after all, bought and paid for by (via advertising) the same companies that comprise the Chamber.
An economic recovery, with well-paying jobs, kills their profit margins.
Ergo, the fight against Obamaism goes on, bought to you by your local news.
b-psycho
I dunno about all that. If they truly thought debt was so bad, the establishment media would be (editorially speaking) either screamingly in favor of “soak the rich” tax policy, or so opposed to global empire & the military-industrial complex that they’d make Amy Goodman blush. What they do complain about is usually insignificant.
Kryptik
It comes straight from the usual litany of right-wing talking points that the media and pundits are all too eager to perpetuate and internalize, because obviously if this many wingnuts are talking and complaining, it must be true.
In contrast, if there are a lot of hippies complaining, it’s just a bunch of dirty fucking hippies and we should obviously insist on the opposite of what they want because they’re dirty fucking hippies, they’re wrong by definition on everything.
Shorter Answer: The Media is a Right-Wing Echo Chamber, you should know this already.
Incertus (Brian)
I’m guessing that while members of the establishment media might lean left on social issues, they make enough money to lean right on economic ones, particularly tax policy, and they’ve bought into the Republican notion that debt is a problem when Democrats are in charge, because money’s being spent on the filthy unwashed rather than on lowering their tax burden.
Nick
Because if they weren’t, people would actually begin abandoning neoconservative thought.
So they have to scare people into thinking the deficit is the new Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Did anyone else watch the President speaking in the Rose Garden this morning. He was pounding the podium in frustration and all the media whores kept asking him was “but Mr. President, the deficit!?! Won’t somebody please think of the deficit!”
Mark Knoller’s tweet;markknoller
If only the media would have been this obsessed with the deficit when Bush was pushing tax cuts and war…but, hey, they made money off tax cuts and wars.
PeakVT
The establishment media, or at least the talking heads we see on TV and the writers who have an op-ed sinecure, has come to identify with the elite. Beating down the middle and lower classes is an elite goal. (This is despite the fact it doesn’t make good economic sense. Humans usually seek relative power, not absolute wealth.) One tactic is deficit scare-mongering.
aimai
DougJ,
It became establishment media consensus because the right wing has been able to purchase think tanks, cruise trips, nice parties, all promulgating this belief since absolutely fucking forever. Murdoch et al are anti debt because, in this case, debt is being used to partially fund the welfare state and the safety net. They are not anti debt when it comes to paying for wars, because their companies and their friends reap the benefits directly in payouts to the military industrial complex. In that case they are anti taxes, and anti pay as you go.
Socially speaking they have the social clout, the money, the time, the spokesmen, to churn out position papers, have cocktail parties, bring along bright young spokesmen, hire people to move in and out of the House and the Senate staff to coax along and educate the Congress. To me “why the debt hysteria” is like asking why Baucus’s lobbyist staffer moved back and forth between the health care industry, lobbying, and his office. Because the big money guys want things a certain way. Because it benefits them. And devil take the hindmost.
aimai
jeffreyw
The media’s deficit line is distributed via breakfast favorites like French toast. I’m pretty sure this is true because after eating I felt the urge to yell at Mrs J about a recent Amazon purchase of replacement filters for the kitteh drinking fountain.
Nick
@DougJ:
easement of media ownership laws.
cleek
@DougJ:
dearth of actually-liberal voices + an over-supply of wingnut voices + the total squishiness of economics + ignorant and faux-balanced reporters.
you know, just like everything else.
timb
Given the choice between “nefarious conspiracy” and “lazy and ignorant,” I always use Occam’s Razor and got with the latter. There are are smart people in journalism, but they are as busy and lazy as anyone else and they understand economics about as well as the average 9th grader. The “sky is falling” deficit crowd talks to “sources” all day and “sources” are almost all political operatives and partisan hacks.
When you add in the class bias of the average national reporter and the “fair to both sides” ethos, you have a perfect fit where their lack of knowledge, lack of applicable facts, bias in favor of “success,” (ie, cash), and “impartiality,” you get deficit hawks in a recession.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Almost twenty-five years ago, after a 20% crash in the DJIA, there was a joke that in ’29 when the market crashed, reporters called their editors, in ’87 they called their brokers. I don’t have stats, but I feel pretty safe in saying that the upper middle class bias in the media has only grown, and grown exponentially, since then. People for whom the Depression was an adult or near-adult memory are pretty much gone, even Kennedy Democrats are dying out. Sitting here thinking about it, the two biggest self ID’d blue collar voices in the MSM of the last decade are Tweety and Punkinhead Russert, both of whom use(d) those roots to rail against ‘big government’ and other Archie Bunkerish boogeymen (and own(ed) IIANM neighboring beachfront houses on Martha’s Vinyard)
Add to that thirty plus years of the working the refs and echo chamber of what all Serious and Reasonable People agree on, and this is what you get.
BR
On the economy here’s what I just wrote to the Whitehouse and DNC:
tim
Ummm…DougJ:
Why don’t you, ya know, do some research and find out, then come back here and tell US?
That would make sense, yes?
Thanks in advance.
DougJ
@timb:
This sounds about right to me.
Lev
The same reason why Blue Dogs blather about it: “the deficit” is easy to say, easy to understand, and sounds like the sensible, responsible position.
kwAwk
I think it has a lot to do with the fact that most journalists are journalism majors and not business, accounting or economics majors, such that they don’t really understand the subject matter they’re covering. It kind of makes them succeptable to logic and explanations that may sound good on their face but in reality aren’t in the ballpark of being correct.
It would be like journalism majors reporting on the best way to design the wings of the space shuttle for optimum lift. Sure you’ll have differing opinions that sound good but the mechanics of it are fairly complex.
timb
@Nick: I don’t Twitter, but could you respond to Mr. Knoller with your genius analysis?
“Explain why the media was not this obsessed with the deficit when Bush was pushing tax cuts and war”
love to see what he says
John Cole
Because the establishment media are all in the upper tax ranges, and they know when people concern troll about the debt, it means cutting social programs and social security. Not raising their taxes.
AnotherBruce
Yo this aint rocket science. For a long time the conservatives have dominated about every media there is except the internet. They are very consistent about their messaging and they know how to amplify it. Liberals don’t have anything close to it. So the right wing message is the one that get’s heard, particularly by the voters that aren’t political junkies. If there is no push back their message is the one that gets accepted.
Nick
@timb: I do all the time, and never get an answer
General Stuck
@Nick: I mostly agree with this. It can be simply boiled down to the media granting the right wing an issue to keep them viable politically. I doubt it is much more complicated than that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@kwAwk:
That too, and what timb said, also. They’d listen to Prof Krugman, but he was like all shrill about Iraq and the Surge worked so wattayagonnado?
priller
As others have mentioned, the media is a right-wing echo chamber.
That the deficit scowls would emerge again the second a Dem won was easily predictable (and was predicted, ie Digby). They didn’t make a peep when Bush was spending like a drunken sailor, but the second Obama stepped in it became unbearable.
Why? Because the establishment media is right-wing. And the right-wing cannot have Dems in power spending money as they need to. It is yet another of their obstructionist tools.
It’s really not so hard to figure out.
Sapheriel
i think it’s because establishment people are rich, and they think only poor people are in debt.
Pangloss
If the Democrats went on the attack against Republicans, alleging that the vote against unemployment benefit extension is a deliberate attempt to undermine the recovery, would that have any traction? I think it would, if the media would run with it.
superking
I don’t know that it is the consensus. Certainly, there are morons like Broder and Freidman who just can’t tell who to believe, because they all sound so reasonable! But a couple weeks ago, Krugman was on This Week, and all the guests lined up to bash the right winger who kept bringing up the debt issue. The consensus of that panel was that debt aside, more had to be done.
My explanation, though, is that the media is still set up to listen to the right wing more than any other group. So, when the wingers say something stupid, the media is more likely to treat it as fact or to run with it.
kwAwk
John Cole said:
Hate to say it but I also think that a divided government also just makes for a better media narrative. Natural conflict and all.
Who’s gonna win, who’s gonna lose.
Much easier to write that story than the 100th version of how Ben Nelson is holding up the legisative agenda.
Kryptik
@Pangloss:
And therein comes the immediate flaw in that assertion.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Because it’s the easiest thing they can write and get away with and still hope to draw eyeballs (and $).
Don’t be surprised when Lindsay Lohan’s lack of panties or whatever titilating tidbit is rocking the gossip sheets makes its way to your political ANALysis page. The big papers really are that desperate because they’ve yet to figure out how to get real news (which is what people still want) without paying to employ the people who can get it for them.
In the meantime, remember: If an idea is easy to repeat, and can be stretched to fill a column or two, the media will run it.
Davis X. Machina
The narrative. It’s always the narrative.
Given a choice between the eternal, facile kitchen table/credit card/checkbook story — who writes paper checks these days? — and even the most pellucid explanation of how counter-cyclical spending works, the former wins every time.
It’s easy to write. The editor will understand it on first reading. The audience is predisposed to think favorably about it. It’s not going to piss advertisers or management off (no mention of
SatanKeynes). What’s not to like?Nick
@General Stuck: Sure, but they don’t return the favor with the left wing needs help staying viable politically.
General Stuck
All my posts are getting etted. test test test
Bender
Yeah, run with that meme — only 73% disagree with you, and are reminded how batshit insane you are when you bust out the paranoia.
Did Guam tip over yet?
mikey
Americans are oddly schizophrenic about the poor, sick and unemployed. For the most part, they REALLY do want ‘somebody’ to help them. Outside of tribal hatred, Americans actually do tend toward kindness. But the key is that they don’t want that ‘somebody’ using THEIR money to help ‘those people’. And since every American tends to lay claim to taxpayer funds as ‘their money’, that means they need a legitimate reason to resist any expenditure that they might see as a transfer of wealth from them to, well, you know. So it’s worry about “the debt”, without any formalized understanding of what that means and how it might be reduced.
Most Americans conflate deficits, sovereign debt and insufficient consumer demand and see it all of a piece. So, the justification that witholding funds to those in need, tragic though it might be, is necessary for America’s economic survival becomes received wisdom, and actually, to a large extent, flows up to the media, pundits and politicians…
mikey
eemom
I usually like Diane Rehm, but lately I’ve been disgusted at how she lets her “guests” parrot these right wing memes as though they were gospel truth and doesn’t challenge them.
For instance. This morning she had some Very Serious bobblebots on “discussing” the financial reform bill and why it isn’t popular, and the assholes were all like “well the polling shows that Americans DISTRUST and FEAR GOVERNMENT more than they do Wall Street, and there’s just a lot of NERVOUSNESS out there about Government, bleat bleat bleat”……and there was nary a WHAT polls show that? And even if they do, WHY do people think those things? Could it be because they’ve been demagogued and lied to by Republicans who play them for the fucking dupes they are? HUH??
Fuck. Them. All.
Davis X. Machina
Who is this Bender fellow, and why is he obsessed with pie?
Nick
@Pangloss:
They’re doing that right now, been doing it for weeks. Have you noticed it? No? That answers your last concern.
Stillwater
Why has establishment media generally decided that debt is the worst problem ever?
It’s a trick question: they haven’t decided any such thing. They have decided that entitlements are the worst problem ever, and reducing the debt is the justification de jure. I mean, the same deficit hawks who want to dismantle the social safety net advocate extending the Bush tax cuts for the uber-wealthy. It’s classic political pushback against policies which run counter to the interests of ‘big business’, (which, btw, is foundational concern of establishment media corporations as well). If a GOPer gets elected next term, general talk of getting the debt under control will quickly disappear, though the specific issue of eliminating entitlements will continue, couched in kinder, gentler language.
Bender
The real answer is that every politician and pundit on the left and right since Reagan has been faking concern about the deficit and “taxing our babies” and “passing on debt to our children” and “saddling the next generation.” It’s an easy thing to say when trying to make the case that your election opponent is doing real harm to YOUR CHILDREN! Like a pædo, practically!
Remember when Dems were slamming the GOP on the debt (“Bush took a $8 bajillion surplus and turned it into a $513 gazillion debt! HEE Haaw HEE Haaw!”)? I don’t recall lefty sites posting “John Kerry is wrong — deficits aren’t that important!”
Perhaps you are not as principled on this issue as you imagine yourself to be.
BombIranForChrist
Professional pundits are preening cowards obsessed with their own self-image, so whenever they are scurrying around to show that they are True and Very Serious Americans, they go to some of the oldest American standby’s, established early in the colonies by Winthrop et al.: very serious Puritanism where Very Serious Leaders Impose Very Serious Discipline on the Unwashed Masses.
One of my professors claimed that White America has never really evolved beyond its puritan roots, and I am inclined to believe him.
Slugger
Right now the ten year Treasury has a rate of <3%. At this bargain rate, it would be crazy to make deficit reduction a priority.
El Cid
@aimai: The right wing was able to wage a counter-attack upon reality because they received generous funding from billionaires and hectomillionaires who realized that funding a decades’ long ideological struggle would pay off enormously.
An extreme example was the Olin / Scaife funding of the lunatic paranoiac attacks on Bill Clinton. This became media reality — a discussion of Whitewater, for example, receiving absolute tons of coverage with no more reality behind it than the establishment media’s emphasizing of the utterly fake ACORN ‘scandal’, resulting in the destruction of that organization and with it the only national organization standing up for poor and people of color communities, including development and voting issues.
There was no similar lavishly funded decades-long ideological struggle by liberals. A trickle of funds to various magazines, but not the decades-long carpet bombing by the warhawk, anti-regulatory, anti-labor, anti-environmental right.
But this is America, and there is no ruling class, class warfare is only something done by the poor against the super-rich, and good centrist politicians always give in too much to the vast and super-powerful ‘left’ and must be screamed at to distance themselves from these marginal, extreme policies which used to be the American standard.
El Cid
@John Cole: Not to mention that people who don’t believe that massive concentrated corporate ownership has an effect on hiring and subtle promotion of issue foci are utterly loony or worse, completely uninterested in reality.
acallidryas
Probably the reason a lot of other people can get all concerned about the deficit. Because it makes a certain amount of intuitive sense, and they don’t care to learn the details. Of course it should be their job to learn the details, but that’s so much more work than just banging out a few paragraphs of conventional wisdom. Everyone is familiar with owing money and being in debt, no one likes having to pay off their debt, many people are hampered by it, so they just assume that the government is as well, nevermind that personal economics and macroeconomics are two entirely different things. Add in a little fear of Red China getting to foreclose and own the entire United States, and how can you not be terrified about the deficit?
tweez
The simpleton thought process goes like this: >ahem<
“When I look at my family’s bills every month, I get concerned over my growing debt. Some day I’ll have to pay it off. If I have to worry about debt overwhelming my income, so should the government. Any further analysis of the situation is nothing but the East coast eggheads and lamestream media trying to fool you.”
There’s no doubt that the politicians and the media are doing the bidding of their corporate masters, but it’s this thought process that gives the idea traction among the less-sophisticated people.
AnotherBruce
@Bender:
I know Bender, it’s really hard to let go of your “liberal media” theme. The media is corporatist, it’s about money for them, and between Koch, Murdoch, Mellon-Scaife and others the conservatives have bought the best right wing media that money can buy. They control newspapers, radio and tv stations throughout the land.
But you know, you guys have to hang on to the liberal media myth to preserve your precious sense of victimhood.
low-tech cyclist
Because it’s a way that they can limit what Democratic administrations can do without giving up the pretense of impartiality.
Sure, they didn’t get all exercised about the debt when GWB was running up the debt, because we were at war and stuff. Nor did they say much about it while Reagan was running it up (can’t remember if they had an excuse for that), although they ultimately stuck Bush Sr. with the political bill for it.
But they made sure that both Clinton and Obama got the message that, due to their predecessors’ profligacy, the Village would do its best to kneecap them if they didn’t put balancing the budget ahead of the issues they actually ran and won on.
Bender
Without ACORN, how will Mickey Mouse and Captain Bad-Ass get registered to vote… and how will pimps get advice on how to avoid taxes?
Think of the People Of Color!
timb
@Bender: consistency is the hobgoblin of a simple mind. There is a pretty significant difference between opposing tax cuts which benefit 10% of the citizenry and blow a hole in the budget and spending social net money in a vast recession with 10% unemployment.
Moral Relativism: it’s not just for Limbaugh anymore
Bender
What, like Ted Turner did? See the problem there?
You’re engaging in fantasy. The NYT, Washington Post, and Boston Globe are never pushing the right’s agenda. The AP and Reuters are not getting Christmas cards from Michael Steele. CBS isn’t a Rove-run propaganda organization. CNN isn’t looking to sabotage Obama. NBC is… well, it has freaking MSNBC on the air.
The majority who say there is a left bias in media judge by what they see coming out of it, not by who owns it (an evil CORPORATION, which are all Republican, because Democrats don’t want to make money!).
Shut down.
lol
The only thing I know is that if Obama would come out of hiding and give a speech once in a while and actually use the bully pulpit, the media and public will follow.
Bender
@timb:
It’s a FOOLISH consistency which Emerson said was the hobgoblin of little minds. People forget that. Most times, consistency is a good thing.
No, not really. We’re talking about how the deficit gets prioritized, and rhetorically, it doesn’t matter how the borrowed money is being spent. If people hear for thirty years how the deficit hurts children, then that’s how it gets played every time there’s a deficit. I don’t agree with either of your characterizations above, of course, but that’s neither here nor there.
tweez
It’s during times when you have less money that you should borrow, and times when you have more money you should save.
It’s the lean times though when you feel concerned about your debt burden, and the good times when you feel unconcerned.
This is based on the average dimwit’s feelings about debt, not about any real macroeconomic concerns.
Rob Roser
It’s not about the debt. It’s about using the debt for an excuse to gut “entitlement” programs and anything that helps the poor survive.
El Cid
@Bender: Actually, you’re wrong. And you’re measurably wrong. This isn’t just ‘left wing’ speculations — and I don’t give the slightest shit whether or not you care about the decades of academic studies of major news media content and structures, nor whether you say ‘Ted Turner’ or ‘Dan Rather’ or the nonsense polls about most journalists being Democrats.
This is reality. To pretend that major corporations happily encourage views and reporting which fundamentally and consistently harm their own institutional interests isn’t just foolish, it’s insane.
What’s more, nobody would blink at such a suggestion for any other society’s press. ‘Oh, you see, in Mexico, these sets of papers are owned by these companies / families, and so this is why you see certain coverage.’
But, no, over here we have insane babbling about ‘Ted Turner’ and ‘gotcha journalism’ and ‘librul medja’.
El Cid
I laugh whenever I hear good old ordinary, average, “Real Americans” talking about how they have to pay their bills and so do companies, so the fedrul gubmit ought to as well.
These people have 20 year mortgages for houses they could never buy with cash. They have 5 year car loans. Many are paying back student loans which put them through the program of study which got them a job. They work for businesses which have property mortgages, which take out loans or investments with promises of profit sharing for expansion, advertising, training, equipment, etc., and which depend on short term loans to meet monthly payroll.
Flat out idiot hypocrites.
AnotherBruce
@Bender:
Who said corporations are evil? Some are some aren’t, just like people. Ted Turner hasn’t run CNN for what like 15 years?
General Electric, Viacom and Disney are corporations. Only in wingnut world would you consider these liberal.
“The NYT, Washington Post, and Boston Globe are never pushing the right’s agenda.” Maybe not, at least to your liking, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re liberal.
I know it’s hard to let go of your saintly victimhood.
El Cid
@Bender: Who pointed out the unacceptable registration of Mickey Mouse? Was it pimp boy or Sean Hannitard? Was this fake registration turned into (Nevada) state electoral authorities. Check and see. Or don’t. Because you don’t give a shit. Just keep repeating Glenn Blecch’s nonsense.
Nick
@lol:
This is snark, right? You mean like today? or Saturday?
Corner Stone
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
The really sad part is that just a short time ago that tidbit would’ve titillated me.
Now? Alas. Also, too.
El Cid
@AnotherBruce: Corporations are neither good nor evil. They are not — no matter nonsense legal terminology or Supreme Court clerk notes from the 19th century — humans.
They either pursue maximum institutional profit or they do not succeed in the task for which they were formed. There are certainly calculations of risk, but these are also compared to contained losses.
If corporations were to systematically ignore their ability to form some sort of ideologically favorable environment, then this would imply that they were run by complete ignoramuses unable to judge what was in their interests — unlike scheming liberal fiends who use Saul Alinsky to plot revolutions decades in the making.
AnotherBruce
@El Cid:
Actually you’re right, they’re more amoral than moral in any good or evil sense.
b-psycho
@tweez: Ok, so government debt isn’t EXACTLY like household debt. Mainly because a household can’t print its own money. But eventually even that debt has to be paid one way or another, doesn’t it? Otherwise why even fucking bother recording it?
El Cid
@AnotherBruce: Of course, that’s not saying the people in charge aren’t evil. Often they are. Jeebus Cripes, we’re not just talking people who just nearly destroyed the world economy by gambling on fictional investments based on fictional mortgage ‘tranches’, etc., but people who have overthrown governments via a compliant US foreign policy establishment, and backed tyrants who slaughtered thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians simply for a bit more market control and profit. (Just one example: United Fruit and Jacobo Arbenz, President of Guatemala, 1954.)
BeccaM
They are employed — by the rich, for the rich — and have lost their ability to sympathize and empathize with those who don’t have jobs or who have incredibly crappy jobs with insane hours for barrel-scrapings pay.
This is how it can be deemed more important to worry about the national debt than whether the poor have a roof over their heads and 3 square meals a day.
Or to paraphrase another sage notion: The jobs of these so-called journalists depend on their not showing any empathy for the poor.
Bernard Finel
Because over 40% of our debt is within 1 year of maturity, and have to be rolled-over constantly. So, we’re walking a razor’s edge. If we continue to add to debt, even a relatively small decline in confidence about our ability to pay interest will cause rates to spike.
As a result, it is possible that further stimulus spending could have zero net impact on the economy if it causes government interest payments to spike — since a significant chunk of those payments end up as Chinese (and other) foreign reserve holdings.
Bush’s deficits in during times of economic growth essentially gutted our ability to respond to economic crises. But blaming Bush — though appropriate — does not solve the problem unfortunate.
The fact is, we’re looking at a decade or more of economic stagnation and there is probably not a damn thing we can do about it. The scary thing is that the American public seems poised and determined to reward the Republicans for having created this structural crisis.
timb
@Bender: Bender, while you are checking Bartlett’s for Emerson, could you also google Keynes and “Smoot-Hawley”? Or, learn anything about the demand side of a macro economic trend.
It’s while I persuing Bender’s faux-know nothingness, that I figured out he’s not a wingnut, he’s a national political reporter. The same fake moral outrage, concentrating on “stories” like ACORN, and mis-understanding of basic economics.
I’m think an CNN producer, but I could accept other alternatives.
sparky
part of the problem here is (imo) that there are several intertwined issues here–
–pretty much everyone agrees that in the long term the US cannot go on as it has since 2008. but that’s always been a given. the immediate questions are:
–should it be fixed sooner rather than later
–how should it be fixed
i am not an economist, so i am not prepared to opine on whether tightening is appropriate now, though as a member of the general public i would say no, if only on the ground that the reinflate policies of the USG haven’t worked at all without massive cash infusions.
as to why the discussion takes this particular form:
in the US, the limits of polite discourse (that is, what is “acceptable” discussion) circumscribe the debate. example: while a tax hike could solve some of these problems, there’s no discussion of one.
consequently, the “only” solution is to reduce the deficit through spending reductions. the second order question then becomes whose oxen shall be gored? here, political conservatives can carry the water for financial conservatives, as the political goals can twin up with the economic goals. thus liberals lose a debate like this not because they have intrinsically bad arguments, but because the arguments are taken off the table before starting.
situationally, it is also important to note that the oligarchy has recovered due to the direct infusions of the UST. having recovered, they see no need for further stimulus, as that stimulus could (they believe) threaten their asset values through, for example, inflation.
finally it is important to note that the oligarchy is by nature conservative and so what we see now is something of a return to normalcy on their part.
Resident Firebagger
Beavis: Why is Tom Petty famous?
Butt-head: Cuz he’s on TV.
Beavis: But why is he on TV?
Butt-head: Cuz he’s famous, dumbass.
The horrors of government debt: Famous and on TV since 2010…
danimal
Ok, I’ll play.
I’ll go with this: today’s establishment media came of age during the Age of Ronaldo Maximus and internalized the critiques of the day. Hence, being tough is always good for foreign policy, teh gays and abortionists are bringing the end of morality, tax rates are always too high, inflation is a tremendous risk, and the deficit is always a problem that needs addressing before our economy collapses AND IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.
It’s like they are stuck in a time warp. It’s Groundhog Day and we’re continually reliving 1983.
Mnemosyne
@Bender:
I do love how Bender makes up arguments in his head by leaving out big chunks of the original argument and then “wins” by only arguing against the nonsensical parts that are left.
The Dems were slamming the GOP on the debt because they created it with irresponsible tax cuts. We didn’t have a deficit until Bush created it.
This is why Kerry was slamming Bush on the debt: because Bush built it himself with tax cuts and unpaid-for wars.
Rick Taylor
__
Debt is only a problem when a Democrat is President. The national debt was hardly worth discussing when President Bush proposed long term tax cuts, or invaded Iraq, or pushed the prescription drug bill.
Katharsis
It’s the Two Santa Claus Theory at work:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0
I wonder if more people know the name of George Soros than Grover Norquist? I bet that’s true.
Bender
@timb:
Child, please — I’ve known that from heart since I was 12. Your welcome for the correction, and don’t be such a poor sport about it next time.
BC
It fits so easily into the accepted conventional wisdom they have been espousing since the days of Reagan, and that is that entitlements are killing this country. The Washington Post editorial board has been riding that horse since 1990, at least. We gotta do something about Social Security! Medicare is going to bankrupt the country! So this meme has become accepted common sense; then the crash happened in 2008. Do you think they could wrap their minds around the potential catastrophe that crash had? Then the tea partiers started their angst about the deficit and it just hit the conventional wisdom crowd in the sweet spot. (Funny thing, when Clinton had the surplus and was using it to bail out Social Security, that led to a lot of criticism, sort of like you have a hobby horse problem that allows you to pontificate and sound oh, so sophisticated and someone comes along and solves it, leaving you exposed as a know nothing, and we can’t have that, can we? So when Gore talked about putting SS receipts into a lock box, he was derided and mocked.)
Bender
@Mnemosyne:
Arguable and irrelevant. The Dems were scaremongering the deficit (which is the topic here, after all) because they were out of office, there were deficits, and they could use that to get votes, full stop. The particulars never matter in fake-deficit-hawking, right or left. Each side can always justify why their outrage is justifiable.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Seems pretty simple to me. The media mostly pimps the stuff that the audience responds to. In those cases where that is not the explanation (not the current example), then they are pimping their own insider blather, the crap they talk about over lunch and drinks, to each other.
But in the case of deficits, they are pretty tuned in to the audience appetite for good old tax-and-spend bashing, and they are mostly audience driven.
It’s the same question you guys are addressing over on the “Seepage” thread. And the same answer.
scarshapedstar
Rovian Projection 101. The Republicans ran up the biggest debt in history, all in the name of Fiscal Responsibility.
There’s only one way to save face and get re-elected: blame the Democrats.
The real question is why the establishment media goes along with it. Actually, there’s no mystery there. They’ve been GOP cheerleaders since 1992.
Martin
Jesus, 81 posts and nobody pointed back to Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain – and Iceland before them? They’re talking about it because Europe recently has proven that large deficts/debts really can matter, and because much of the economic bubble of the last few years is tied back to excess of consumer debt.
You can argue (easily and successfully, in fact) that the current deficits and debt levels by the federal govt. aren’t at crisis levels, but unless an improving trend develops (evidence of which is just barely developing) then it’s reasonable to be concerned about it in a broad sense.
If you look at when the media (not the GOP) raised it as a serious issue, it was in relation to problems in Europe, not the election of Obama. And I’ve seen decent reporting in the media showing that the US isn’t in danger, but the lack of GDP growth and *actual* deficit spending not yet showing a pullback is still reason to worry. Remember, Bush’s deficit promises and reality were VERY different things. I don’t fault the media for waiting to see the real numbers – I’m waiting as well.
Nick
@Bender:
Because Bush wasted away this surplus and blew the deficit sky high with no tangible positive effect on anybody except the super rich or military contractors, who, in turn, have done zip to help people who need help.
Democrats are ok with the deficit, as long as it helps people who need help. If we can create hundreds of thousands of jobs, then the deficit is worth it. If we can keep people in their homes, then the deficit is worth it. Because more workers means more tax revenue and that should help close the deficit because the deficit exists due to lack of revenue.
The tax cuts and the war helped no one who needed help, it helped people who didn’t need help, and it made it harder for us to respond to a crisis like this.
Bender
(Really? CEOs Iger, Eisner and Immelt have been far-leftwingers for decades, Dauman of Viacom is an Obama Dem… but whatever…I just thought you should know…)
Don’t you see that by your rationale, all news, save a few niches, would be FOX News, all splitting the conservative, free-market, corporations-are-good audience? But the reverse seems to be true — FOX gets almost all the conservative viewers, because it is perceived to be the ONLY conservative-leaning TV news outlet.
By your rationale MSNBC, the New York Times, the WaPo, liberal network news programs, The Daily Show, etc., would not be allowed to exist, as their left-leaning stances would conflict with their companies’ business concerns. So why do they exist?
This exchange from a GE stockholders meeting between members of the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research (which owns GE stock) and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt might explain some of it:
“MSNBC, part of GE’s NBC Universal, runs programming that is offensive to a substantial portion of the population. Keith Olbermann has called the Tea Party movement the ‘Tea Klux Klan’ and has said the Republican Party wants to re-impose Jim Crow Laws,” said David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center. “Whatever your political outlook, I said [to Immelt], this doesn’t make sense for GE… I also asked what he was doing to address the perception — especially among conservatives — that GE stands against them. Quite a bit of applause followed. Immelt didn’t answer but went to the next question.”
Later, Ridenour asked the same question, noting he never received a reply the first time. Immelt said GE has never attempted to influence the programming of its news or public affairs programs. Immelt repeated that when specifically asked about an April 16, 2009 New York Post Page Six story reporting that a three-hour meeting took place between Immelt and top CNBC executives and on-air talent for the purpose of making sure CNBC had not become “too conservative.”
“I asked Immelt about GE’s support of cap-and-trade and the letter from its political action committee that stated Waxman-Markey would good for its business,” said Tom Borelli, director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project. “I specifically asked how much money GE was going to make if cap-and-trade passes. Immelt responded that he did not know, and I told him that was a joke…”
So, they turn a blind eye and let the journos do what the journos do (while making money off cap-and-trade, stimulus, etc.). And since the national journos are 85% – 90% Democrat voters, guess what they do… There are limits, of course. I think lefty Sumner Redstone was at the Viacom helm when they had to let Rather and Mapes go for the faked Bush TANG memos.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Go read Greenwald today, focusing on the quotation of George Carlin, who always laid it out simply. They want OUR MONEY and they’re going to try to STEAL IT.
Bucky55
Steven Keen stated:
“Debt-financed growth is also highly unlikely, since the transference of the bubble from one asset
class to another that has been the by-product of the Fed’s too-successful rescues in the past ((Minsky 1982, pp. 152-153.)) means that all private sectors are now debt-saturated: there is no-one in the private sector left to lend to.
…
Instead of a sign of economic success, the “Great Moderation” was a sign of failure. It was the lull before the storm of the Great Recession, where the lull was driven by the same force that caused the storm: rising debt relative to GDP in an economy that had become beholden to Ponzi finance. ”
And, Hyman Minsky stated:
” When a market fails or falls into crisis after an extended period of market speculation or unsustainable growth. A Minsky moment is based on the idea that periods of speculation, if they last long enough, will eventually lead to crises; the longer speculation occurs the worse the crisis will be. This crisis is named after Hyman Minsky, an economist and professor famous for arguing the inherent instability of markets, especially bull markets. ”
Bottom line, most of debt is held by the wealthy and they want it paid off, from Daily Kos article “Why-the-economy-isnt-recovering”
“It is the rich of the world that own those overvalued debt obligations and they want their pound of flesh, even if it means that the real economy is stripped bare and tens of millions of working class people suffer to accomplish this.”
Bill Murray
I think aimai hit it above
deficits matter when the money isn’t going to the right people and if inflation is going to reduce the value of the money held by the rich, and the likelihood of debt peonage
Epicurus
The answer to your final question (which other commenters have already given) is the PR desk of the Republican National Committee. Any surprises there? The Mighty Wurlitzer is working 24/7 now.
Nick
@Martin:
Actually, this is reason NOT to worry…it isn’t until the economy starts recovering and we see big GDP growth that the deficit will be a problem. In fact, if we want GDP growth, more money needs to be pumped into the economy. I don’t care how we get, I’d rather we just plain take it from the people who are hoarding it, but since that would be Socialism and everything, deficit spending it is!
El Cid
@Martin: The nations of the EU you mention cannot allow currency to fluctuate.
El Cid
@Bender: Wait — how does arguing that liberal journos working on GE networks push stories about cap and trade when GE’s leadership and PAC estimate greater profits from cap and trade contradict analyses showing the potential for corporate ownership of media to influence content?
Likewise, what sort of childlike analysis would hold that corporate ownership influence on media would only result in FoxNooz channels?
Everyone knew what Pravda said was false, so it had no effect. If every network and newspaper were like the howling gibbons at FoxNooz and the Moonie Times, how would this influence anyone of anything? It’d be Pravda all over again.
Hell, advertising campaigns have more clever designs and approaches to effectiveness. Advertising works — not 100%, not in every case, but it’s not by accident that it saturates nearly every aspect of life. And if it were always simple parodic gibberish, it wouldn’t be effective. It has to be believable.
Bender
@Nick:
Of course, that’s a highly disputable interpretation. But again, I don’t think that’s Doug’s question. Deficits are seen as terrible. (Whether one party or the other is willing to put up with them to “help” a prioritized constituency — whether the military and businesses or the unions and the poor — is irrelevant.) What he’s after is how did it get that way, and my answer is “30 years of election-year demagoguery” by Washington’s left and right — mixed with a healthy dose of public ignorance/apathy.
Nick
@Martin:
as far as this, the problem here is that these countries are in the same economic zone and have the same currency as Germany and France, whose economies are growing and doing pretty well. They cannot control their currency. Germany controls their currency.
Nick
@Bender:
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past nine years, sure. I’d like to hear you dispute the notion that war spending and Bush tax cuts did good things. Really, I’d love to hear it.
Sure, but there are such things as necessary evils. There’s a reason why this administration won’t increase the deficit to pay for the wars (unlike Bush), but will for unemployment or stimulus money. Because unemployment insurance, small business tax cuts, and stimulus money helps the economy by keeping people in their homes and in the stores and allows growth and job creation that will create jobs and increase tax revenue that will ultimately close budget gaps.
Seriously, it doesn’t take a genius to understand this, it just takes a leap of faith that neoconservative economic philosophy is wrong.
Bender
It doesn’t, as long as the content is influenced to the left.
The point is that even though one might think that corporate ownership of media would lead to a preponderance of conservative (or Republican) content, it doesn’t. And it doesn’t, because the CEOs are leftwingers, and because they don’t influence their political bureaus to slant conservative. In fact, Immelt held a meeting to make certain they didn’t lean more conservative.
The assumption of corporations favoring Republicans is a common fungus within this argument about media bias. The cap-and-trade situation with GE (and the earlier lightbulb laws) illustrates a situation where left-liberal environmental policies benefit certain corporations more then the conservative policies would.
General Stuck
Teevee anchors and pundits don’t do what they do for money. Some of it is a need to be known, but mostly they are raw ambitious to a fault, not unlike the politicians they chum with. There is an element of corporate media at play with mega corps like Time Warner etc… filled with country club wingnut suits. And the pundits and producers surely don’t want to get on their bad side, but the reason is career based, and mo money secondary, and certainly not concern for deficits personally.
It is a highly competitive profession and cut throat shit has always been part of it to get the big scoop. But in the past, there was a gentlemans agreement with the government, in order to use the public airwaves, networks had to forego profit and bring us high quality news. That has all fallen away currently, so the corp execs want profit, and that means not pissing off, and even stroking the wingnut bag men, and the pundits want to climb the ladder, and that means not pissing off the corp execs. So we get false equivalence non stop, and if the nutters clusterfuck themselves to much with the voting public, like say the last 8 years, we get pro active stroking of the GOP brand name. And that means carving out a stupid issue, or two, like deficits, and polishing those turds daily. But the tea baggers are almost a bridge too far, for personally liberal media folks. It is hard to polish a four square racist turd, even for them.
Hypnos
Let’s put this in very clear terms:
Deficit for tax cuts to the rich and invading countries = bad
Deficit for saving the economy and giving millions a job and a future = good
We know you think killing people and pampering the priviledged is actually a more worthwhile use of government money than helping those in need.
That would be the main reason we think you are an asshole.
Hypnos +3
Bender
Based on your later economic argument, I’d love to hear how these great multiplier effects work when putting newly-printed money into the hands of the poor, but there’s zero net economic gain for putting money into the hands of the bulk of the taxpaying earners.
Interestingly, neocons generally favor government intrusion into the markets, including a welfare state. So YOU are Teh Neo-KKKon here, not I! ***The More You Know…***
Sorry, I don’t buy the theoretical short-term multiplier effect, especially in regards to deficit spending. In the longer term, interest on debt, inflation, inefficiencies, waste, fraud, administrative costs, etc., are likely to counter any short-term multipliers, and we’ve all seen plenty of examples of failed government policies and falling GDPs around the globe to suggest that the mult is a failed bit.
El Cid
@Bender:
Good lord, are you serious? Because as income goes up less of a percentage of earnings goes into consumer goods and services in the local economy. With the unemployed it’s of course 100% going into immediate consumer spending, as well as the avoidance of all types of costs of millions of families without any incomes and thus no possibility of local economic investment at all and imposing huge costs of emergency aid and community difficulties. And depending on the level of wealth targeted with tax cuts, above certain levels tax cuts result in savings and in non-consumer investments, which is a negative multiplier.
Bill
@timb: This, x1000.
Simple- how many stories about the deficit were done up to 1/20/2009?
Seems like that date was a turning point for lots of things, positions on issues being a largish example.
goatchowder
where does this come from?
Why, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, et al., that’s where it comes from!
It’s right-wing spin. Nothing more.
Bender
Yes, of course I understand the theory of the escalating multiplier as government spending affects poorer consumers, but to discount any positive effect at the higher brackets at all (as the original post did) is ridiculous. Not all of Bush’s cuts went to the top 10% (or 25%) of earners, you know.