September 26, 2010
Most workers are held accountable for their performance. The same does not apply at the Washington Post for the people who run economic policy. Once again the Post offered praise to Presidents Bush and Obama for preventing a Great Depression.
Of course it is always good to prevent a Great Depression, but the only reason a severe recession is even on the agenda is the result of braindead economic policies that were almost entirely ignored by the Washington Post. In the real world avoiding a Great Depression is a rather weak boast. (For the record, the second “Great Depression” story is a myth to scare little children and Post readers. The first Great Depression was the result of a decade of failed policies, not a single mistake or set of mistakes at its onset.)
Competent economists saw and warned of the dangers of the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which eventually sank the economy. This was an entirely predictable and predicted event, as was the fallout from this collapse.
However, those warning of the bubble were almost completely excluded from the pages of the Post. Instead, the Post filled its economic coverage and opinion pages with discussions of the budget deficit, which was (and is) the topic of endless hyperventilation.
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