Encounter Broadsides
2 total works
In his first nine months in office Barack Obama has pursued the most aggressive government expansionist agenda since Franklin Roosevelt's new deal was launched in 1933. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel summarized the Obama first-year game plan best: "An economic crisis is a terrible thing to waste." So far, we have seen multi-trillion dollar bailouts in housing, banking, insurance, and auto industries, the stimulus plan, cap and trade, a $1.2 trillion health care bill, and of course, the $4 billion cash for clunkers program. None of this has worked. Now, six months after the stimulus progam, we sit at 9.4% unemployment. Two million more Americans are jobless. The debt has exploded like a cork from a bottle of champagne. We are now told that the Obama agenda will cost $9 trillion in debt as it plans to spend $42 trillion over the next decade. In this riveting broadside, Stephen Moore explains this rotten story of Washington arrogance and malfeasance, and reveals exactly why Obamanomics failed.
What happens when a leading conservative economist goes mano a mano with today's most influential exponent of left-liberal economics, over free markets versus government interventionism? Here are highlights of that showdown between Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation and Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate. Moore and Krugman sparred over eight major economic issues in our national debate -- from whether the policy response to the crisis of 2008 was successful, to the outlook for Obamacare, to the "red state / blue state" divide. The contest was cordial and spiced with wit. (Does air conditioning explain the migration from blue to red states? Is Houston still uninhabitable?) This high-powered matchup illuminates a clash of worldview that leads to opposing policy prescriptions. More important, it will help you draw conclusions about which economic policies work.