Since September 2008 the only people left who trust economists are other economists. As a young man I trusted John Kenneth Galbraith. Today, I would not ask an economist for the =time of day=. Talk about a dismal science!

We are in a mind-boggling, societal, philosophical crisis. Why? Because the lesson of the last two years is this: 21st century democracy cannot control 21st century Capitalism. Any decent referee would jump in between the combatants, stop the fight, and quickly have the ring physician examine American democracy.

Making Capitalism accountable to Democracy again is the Himalayan burden now being dumped upon the poor thin shoulders of Elizabeth Warren. Why am I the only person seeing this? Where the hell are the pundits? Where is David Gergen?

To even HOLD an election next November is psychologically cruel. It generates hope in the struggling and drowning masses that =being a good and dutiful citizen= and =organizing= and turning out to vote will return the clock to Ozzie & Harriet, David & and Ricky. [I can hear folks asking: Who are they?] Hope devastates.

Years ago Bill Moyers opined: "Democracy has been stolen." A handful of people listened to him. Perhaps what Bill needed to say was that our democracy has been kidnapped by psychopathic capitalists and - in some hidden location - is being sexually assaulted over and over again. The kidnappers send us ransom notes every single day, from AIG and those to whom we gave bailout money. But, just as in real kidnapping, our chances of getting democracy safely returned to us is zero.

We are in crisis. What would Thomas Jefferson expect of us? What would Henry Steele Commager expect of us? What would Abe Fortas expect of us? What would Dr. Ernest Gruening expect of us? What would Edward R. Morrow expect of us? While the world watches, this entire nation is a herd of deer in headlights.

This article starts off pretty good, but then gets bogged down in whining about the deficits, which actually are part of the solution to the problem as long as they're spent on working people who actually create the wealth in the first place. The rich and super rich just take what we produce except for the old money ones. We have to keep that in mind. We need deficits and we need to get rid of all this dogma about balanced budgets which should have gone out witht the fall of the Weimar Republic which did balance its budget and made its depression worse and helped pave the way for the Nazis coming to power.

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Excellent article Roger...

I'm of the mind that the ONE THING that caused the crash is our corrupt political system.

Politicians took cash bribes and passed NAFTA, CAFTA, and GATT that made it financially attractive to CEOs to outsource jobs to countries with lower wages. They even give taxpayer-funded subsidies to companies that outsource to India… money that should instead be spent on creating jobs in America.

Campaign bribes also succeeded in getting congress to repeal the Glass-Steagall banking regulations in 1999 that were put into place following the crash in the 1930′s. Thanks guys.

If campaign contributions created this problem, only public funding of campaigns can reverse it.

Jack Lohman

I DON'T support the troops. As long as they are occupying foreign lands the people in those lands have the moral responsibility to get them to leave by whatever means necessary. The Iraqi and Afghani "insurgents" (patriots) are the moral equivalent of the French Resistance and the American Sons of Liberty. The troops should mutiny. They have to realize that they are only being used by people who don't care when they are maimed or killed.

Three paragraphs in you realise this article is a complete waste of time.

At that point I go directly to the comment boards, where you are bound to find very insightful commentary - as was the case here.
If I may distill some of the most pertinent in my view:
1) using the same thought processess to extract ourselves from this situation as those which created it is completely useless. Trying to continue patching and Band-Aid-ing Capitalism will only result in exactly what it has produced throughout its history - poverty, misery and an untouchable elite class which runs the system for only their benifit. Clearly a new economic/societal model is needed.
2)the days of infinite cheap energy are over which will dictate a new way of living within the limits of what is available. The fossile fuel bonanza provide a period unlike any other - sort of like a locust bloom... over-running the globe with people, industrial agriculture, cheap products and materials. This era is coming to a rapid close and will necessetate a new mode of living and smaller global population.
3) The rich need to be taxed progressively as they were in the 50's & 60's in an attempt to de-stratify society, but given the current soft corporate fascism model of government, this clearly will not happen. The rich will never abandon a system which they created precisely for wealth concentration. Which necessitates #1 above.
4) the Military is a true relic of a barbaric nation intent on stealing everything they can from poor but resource rich nations, causing untold misery and devastation. For the human species to continue to exist in an era of ever more potent and lethal weapons an end to militarization must be part of the plan otherwise we are all doomed
5) I am afraid that I agree with those pesimists who believe that things will have to get much worse before enough people open their minds to new possibilities. The current system will have to implode due to its own inherent contradictions and wanton corruption. Which I believe is happening at this very moment and makes these incredibly interesting and challenging times.

The evidence of the effective results of the previous stimulus spending makes the claims of these "economists" absurd.

The argument that we just didn't spend enough should embarrass anyone with an education above the third grade.

And anyone that would believe that Geitner and gang would spend any new stimulus money differently or that the money would go to different places than the last, really shouldn't be out without their attendant.

the real progressive thing to do is

to stop participating in the global capitalist game

in every way possible, and

start building, or joining, just and peaceful alternative ways of life.

Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."

We just had two terms of Bush's fiscally insane tax cuts for the super-rich during wartime when we had not one but multiple wars for which to pay. Since the super-rich didn't chip in their fair share to help pay for these wars--which profited them as an economic class the most--the U.S. government had to borrow money plus interest from the Chinese to help cover our annual military budgets. Several of those budgets under Bush II and now under Obomber were and are in excess of $700 Billion dollars. That's more than twice the $300 Billion dollar a year peak of the Cold War Pentagon's annual budget when we faced the LEGITIMATE threat of global thermonuclear war (and came close to it in the early '60s).

Economists are calling the Bush years THE LOST DECADE because there were no net new jobs created by the end of his second term in office. Bush II stated that his tax cuts for the rich would help create 300,000 new jobs every month. He only met that quota two months during the 88 months of his two terms BEFORE the November 2008 near collapse of the big banks.

There is no historical evidence whatsoever to support the spurious right-wing contention that tax cuts for the super-rich lead to significant job creation--even during pre-"free trade" era economic booms--let alone during wartime combined with a severe deflationary economic contraction. The fact that the expiration of these tax cuts for the already hideously bloated plutocratic parasites of our real economy is even being debated in this country under present economic circumstances blares, once again, to the rest of the developed world what a dumbed-down, brainwashed, fascist Orwellian cesspool that post-Bush "Amurka" has become.

Unfortunately, we are not in a recession or depression. We're in a permanent poverty economy, where the amount of wealth taken by the super-rich is so huge that most people don't have enough to participate in the economy. So things stop working.

So government stimulus will provide short-term relief, but will not get us "out of the recession." Only greater equality can do that.

Similar to "The Nation", "In These Times" talks populist but is hamstrung as they fall for the hope that the Democrats have the right plan to stimulate the economy. Obama is already working on terminating Social Security so the Republicans won't have to. If government is interested in spurring demand, how about not signing up children to "serve" and how about getting us some domestic jobs and production back home so can help the environment and stop being behind other nations? Perhaps we should consider moving the nation's capital from the east coast to Topeka for what it's worth. Middle America would get the right attention on jobs.

"The basic problem is a lack of demand," Nonsense! The U.S. is the largest market in the world that everyone wants to export to.Thats the problem. The money Americans are spending is leaving the country via our huge trade deficit.We need to bring back the jobs we lost overseas by restricting imports, just as almost every other nation does,and start balancing our trade deficit. Our budget deficit would take care of itself.

This article makes clear the difference between basic progressives and greens - and that we're not a monolith here. I take absolute exception to the premise of this article. Why do we want our old economy back? It was thoroughly greased with injustice: sweatshop conditions abroad, unforgivable pollution, bloody resource-driven wars, concentration of wealth into corrupt and self-serving hands, devastation of critical ecosystems, greenhouse gasses. Doesn't anyone remember that the price of gas was spiking on account of demand to the point where our petroleum-driven food chain was leaving a lot of people out in the cold? Doesn't anyone remember the food riots around the world in 2008?

The recession has had a silver lining - it eased overconsumption that was rising to critical levels. If we go back to doing what we were doing we'll be bankrupting ourselves ecologically, and that's a far worse horror story than anything that can happen on Wall Street.

You really want more demand under the current system? That means more oil demand. That means more offshore drilling, pressure to cut costs from more expensive production, and systemically, more accidents like the one with the Deepwater Horizon. There's no extricating these issues from each other. How much of the ocean do you want to kill?

We can actually live happily on a fraction of the wealth we have if we redistribute it more evenly and employ it in a sustainable manner. Kerala in India is a good example of how first-world literacy, life expectancy, and quality of life can be achieved on a third world budget. We need to focus on replacing a broken and destructive machine, not revving it up again.

There's a serious contradiction here. We need to increase demand but our environment says we need to decrease consumption. I'm curious as to how these "progressive" economists plan on overcoming that basic contradiction.

We aren't going to spend our way out of this problem. We might as well have Junior at the helm again. We need to embark on developing clean, sustainable and renewable modes of living. If we do this, jobs will come. An interstate mass transit system would employ many. Putting solar panels on every roof in America would employ many more. Restoring our manufacturing base to build and produce life's necessities like clothing would employ more.

Rising GDP is a death sentence. Any political party or ideology that views this as a solution is really selling you a toxic bill of goods.

Reducing armed forces spending, legalizing Cannabis, and taxing internationals are all good things to do.
What about taking donated money or using a small carbon tax to Fund a Cool Gaia. I'd use it to stop the huge methane volcano — rising temperatures are melting permafrost which is releasing long-frozen biological materials.

First I'd try different ways to temporarily reduce this warming locally. Whitewashing soils or forests, for instance. As they travel, planes or ships might distribute calcium or iron to improve the environment.

Then I'd think about the poor of the world. Those living off the land are self-sufficient. When farmers, ranchers, or miners take their ecosystems' better lands, they're forced to move to cities, towns, or camps to get enough food.

If each was given a small credit each year, 50 wanderers who need water to maintain their ecosystem would have enough credit for the manufacture, transportation, and installation of a windmill-driven well, a wastewater line from a city (segregated sewage only).

Haiti suffers from denuded, muddy areas. This fund could fund a local nursery and pay locals to plant trees.

Because of overpopulation, there is no longer any solution to the problems we face.

The Moguls know this. In their minds, ‘Here’s To Me, Fuck You’ is the best they can come up with. Their lame idea of starving the beast (such as eliminating ‘seniors’, offering others’ young as cannon fodder, etc.) is too timid to offer a real solution. The kill ratio is simply not of sufficient scale.

The only real solution is all-out Nuclear War. Souls simply need to be liberated from life on this planet. With luck, entire gene-pools will be eliminated.

Trouble is – many of us ‘little people’ will suffer and die as well.