Abstractions

Bob Herbert of the NYT seems to agree with my earlier post on neo-liberalism versus true liberalism when he says the following:

The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama
understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get
it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging.

The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this
economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance
that the Great Recession is probably over. Their focus, of course, is on data,
abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of
living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of
joblessness.

Needless to say, Bob Herbert is a true liberal of the old school.

We seem to be waiting for some mythical rebound to come rolling in,
magically equipped with robust job creation, a long-term bull market and
paradise regained for consumers.

That is what the administration has always pointed to...a recovery back to normality, by which they seem to mean the norm of the last five years...when the economy was hyperjuiced up on the housing bubble and the illusionary Wall Street securitization boom. But that ain't going to happen. No way.

You'd think that the long-term best interest of the nation would be for the leader to tell the truth to the country. It isn't coming back to anything like what it was in the last ten years, and probably for a while before that.

But that's assuming Obama knows the economic truth and hasn't himself been deceived by the abstract mindgames of the neo-liberals he's appointed. And it also assumes he has the political courage to tell the economic truth, no matter what the consequences. But that's unlikely as well.

The master in this area, of course, was Franklin Roosevelt. His first
Inaugural Address was famous for the phrase: “The only thing we have to fear.
...” But he also said in that speech: “Our greatest primary task is to put
people to work.” And he said the country should treat that task “as we would
treat the emergency of a war.” Now that’s the sense of urgency we
need.

As far as I can tell, FDR had the bankers by that very sensitive place on the male body, whereas I get the impression that's where the bankers have Obama.