The Truth is that Economics is not an exact science. In the past 60 years, after lots of Econometrics research, we have learned a few things about what works and what does not work in the Economy:
- WHEN you have a recession on your hands, you spend money, lots of money.
- You do NOT reduce spending – that is IF you care to keep some jobs.
- Reducing taxes is significantly less efficient at creating jobs than spending money on large projects.
The problem in the end is that spending money is not sufficient.
What moved the US out of the 1929 depression is actually not President Roosevelt’s New Deal but the ramp up to World War 2.
All the efforts of the Federal Government are not enough to move a country as large as the United States out of a recession and into renewed prosperity. Moving out of a severe recession takes the combined efforts of the Federal Government and of millions of individuals who are motivated to pour their energy into creating new value.
Sometimes the direction where this new value creation needs to happen is obvious,
and sometimes the country is reticent to move in that direction.
What Obama needs to do is INSPIRE the Nation to move in a new direction and THAT he is not doing.
We are at a John Kennedy moment. We are 1961 when John Kennedy pronounces his famous speech where he announces that the United States will launch a space program to put a man on the moon. Except that we have already done that, been there.
The challenge today is to move this country toward a sustainable lifestyle.
And THAT is much more difficult than putting a man on the moon because this economy is entirely not organized around a careful use of Energy. Hence the Resistance, hence the REACTION of those who are attached to their gains or to their old life style, call them Tea Party or Republicans if you wish. Moving to a Sustainable Life Style is going to take all the efforts of the Federal Government and many many more people. That is the discourse that Mr. Obama is missing.
We are at a historical moment when the United States are tittering on the brink of being taken over by an even more reactionary regime than the one of Mr. George W. Bush. And this is because the Obama Government is seeing the big stones in front of itself, the big reforms that are needed and is not seeing the BIG PICTURE.
