by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Euphemism comes from the Greek word\u00a0euphemia<\/em>, which means \u201cusing the good word\u201d\u2014usually in place of the accurate bad one. Recently we\u2019ve become experts at it.<\/p>\n Printing trillions more dollars and growing government to cover new debts isn\u2019t so bad if we call it \u201cstimulus.\u201d That is far smarter than saying something honest like, \u201cI propose a new $1 trillion debt program.\u201d<\/p>\n The old-fashioned spendthrift policies we used to ridicule as congressional pork and \u201cearmarks\u201d are now justified under that ubiquitous, nice word \u201cstimulus.\u201d If funding another questionable museum in your district was once congressional pork barreling, it will now be a patriotic act to get the national economy moving again.<\/p>\n Yet much of what is driving this national hysteria in our reaction to the current economic downturn is psychological. After all, no plagues, wars, or earthquakes have killed our workforce, destroyed our infrastructure, or wiped out our computer banks.<\/p>\n Instead, for years now we have overspent and over-borrowed \u2014 and must naturally pay up. And like any chastised debtor, panicked Americans logically have temporarily clammed up and are holding on to what money they have left.<\/p>\n In response, the government apparently doesn\u2019t only want to free up credit to get us back to our profligate habits of borrowing what we don\u2019t have so we can buy what we don\u2019t need. It also would like to create new programs to build infrastructure; guarantee new loans; and offer additional credits, bailouts and entitlements.<\/p>\n Or in the words of incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, \u201cYou never want a serious crisis to go to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n Traditional conservative custodians of the budget can\u2019t say much. They are largely discredited on matters of finance. During the last eight years of Republican prominence in Congress and the White House, the government borrowed as never before.<\/p>\n Liberals in turn have suddenly rewritten their own economic history. They used to claim the great surge in government under Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression with deficit spending and federal jobs programs.<\/p>\n But many historians have argued instead that unemployment and slow growth remained high throughout Roosevelt\u2019s first two terms \u2014 until the Second World War scared us all into a fit of national mobilization that alone ended the ongoing 13-year depression between 1929 and 1941.<\/p>\n Now here\u2019s the irony: Liberals suddenly agree that only the Second World War stopped the Depression, after all! So they now argue that we need a new New Deal far greater than the old New Deal. In other words, they want to re-create the urgency of World War II to get government to grow and spend big-time.<\/p>\n Their argument is that if FDR failed to stop the Depression, it wasn\u2019t, as conservatives insist, because he turned to unworkable government solutions, but rather because he didn\u2019t try big enough ones.<\/p>\n The government-affiliated, under-regulated, and corrupt Fannie Mae may have collapsed. And it may have helped to cause the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. No matter \u2014 the proposed \u201cdon\u2019t waste a crisis\u201d cure seems to use that model of government-guaranteed corporations to absorb as much of the economy as possible.<\/p>\n Still, no one knows whether the present borrowing and printing of money to give short-term credits, cash grants and jobs to Americans will get the economy moving again \u2014 or simply reinforce the bad habits that got us here in the first place.<\/p>\n But consider a few facts: Even in the current mess, recent unemployment figures are around 7 percent \u2014 not the 10 percent of the recession of the early 1980s, much less the peak of 25 percent in the Great Depression.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, energy prices have plunged, saving consumers and the country hundreds of billions of dollars. The existing pre-stimulus annual budget was already set to run about a half-trillion-dollar deficit. The present government debt, much of it to Asia and Europe, was nearing $13 trillion even before the latest borrowing plans.<\/p>\n We are going to have to pay these debts back by cutting federal spending and entitlements or raising taxes \u2014 or both. Or we can convince panicky debt holders abroad to loan us even more money for years at near-zero interest rates. Or we can try simply printing trillions of new dollars to inflate the economy while hoping that creditors don\u2019t mind being paid with funny money.<\/p>\n What got us in this debacle was the lack of self-control on the part of consumers who borrowed to spend more than they could pay back, rapid growth in government debt, and Wall Street speculators who wanted obscene returns they had not earned.<\/p>\n It would be a pity if the government now trumped these bad examples and turned some helpful federal loan guarantees of troubled banks into a permanent state-run economy with crushing debt for generations to come.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Absorbing as much of the economy as possible. by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Euphemism comes from the Greek word\u00a0euphemia, which means \u201cusing the good word\u201d\u2014usually in place of the accurate bad one. Recently we\u2019ve become experts at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[725],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Mo","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2878,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dr-obama-first-do-no-harm\/","url_meta":{"origin":3000,"position":0},"title":"Dr. Obama: First, Do No Harm","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When it comes to our complex economy, President Barack Obama would do well to heed the physician's ancient commandment to first \"do no harm.\" Instead, Obama's administration has been prescribing all sorts of multibillion-dollar borrowing remedies without any consistent diagnosis of what is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2009"","block_context":{"text":"March 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/march-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12879,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-descent-into-collective-madness\/","url_meta":{"origin":3000,"position":1},"title":"Our Descent Into Collective Madness?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 21, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness These are crazy times. A pandemic led to national quarantine, to self-induced recession, to riot, arson, and looting, to a contested election, and to a riot at the Capitol.\u00a0 In response, are we focusing solely on upping the daily vaccination rate?\u00a0 Getting the country\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1615,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-good-and-bad-words\/","url_meta":{"origin":3000,"position":2},"title":"Obama’s Good and Bad Words","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Barack Obama once warned, \u201cDon\u2019t tell me words don\u2019t matter!\u201d He was right. They do.\u00a0\u00a0 These days, financiers and investors are a \u201cbunch\u201d of \u201cfat-cat bankers.\u201d When your 401(k) tanks, surely a \u201cbunch\u201d of \u201cfat-cat\u201d miscreants who run a \u201cbank\u201d did it. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2010"","block_context":{"text":"May 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/may-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1857,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-obama-saga-part-two-chapters-five-six\/","url_meta":{"origin":3000,"position":3},"title":"Our Obama Saga–Part Two. Chapters Five-Six","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Here\u2019s the conclusion to the saga of Obama. I left off [1] with Chapter Four and why the Obama locomotive went off the rails after only a year. Chapter Five \u2014 The Verdict Is Still Out So here we are after a year with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2010"","block_context":{"text":"February 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/february-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9047,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/in-search-of-fixes-for-a-fossilized-economy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3000,"position":4},"title":"In Search of Fixes for a Fossilized Economy","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services The U.S. economy grew at an anemic rate of less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2015. While the unemployment rate has dipped below 5 percent, the all-important labor force participation rate is at a historic low of just 62.7 percent.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1203,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/politics-upside-down\/","url_meta":{"origin":3000,"position":5},"title":"Politics Upside Down","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 17, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Something Is Different Suddenly the same-old, same-old does not work this year. 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