As President Obama helps the world avoid a catastrophic collapse of the global economy, the Guardian reports that R. Glenn Hubbard — a senior adviser to the Romney campaign — did his best to sabotage the fragile progress being made by the President and European leaders. Mr. Hubbard offered a German-language diatribe in Germany’s leading business newspaper. From the Guardian piece:
In an op-ed in Handelsblatt, Germany’s leading business newspaper, R Glenn Hubbard, the dean of the Columbia Business School, said Obama’s strategy was “unwise” and revealed “ignorance of the causes of the crisis and of a growth trend in the future.”
It received a rebuke from White House officials who said airing the criticism in an overseas media outlet broke with political convention and undermined American foreign policy.
In the piece, Hubbard said it was a mistake for the US to encourage Germany to “stand up financially weak governments and banks in the eurozone”.
“Unfortunately, the advice of the US government regarding solutions to the crisis is misleading. For Europe and especially for Germany,” Hubbard wrote, according to a New York Times translation of the article from the Handelsblatt.
The photo, showing Mr. Hubbard in a meeting with the advisory board of George W. Bush, succinctly captures all I need to know about Mr. Hubbard — he, and the Romney campaign, now seek to impose their failed dogma on the world, relying on the same economic advisers that nearly destroyed the US economy in 2008.
The European nations know that the “austerity” measures advocated by this delusional dogma will destroy the world’s economy, just as similar measures destroyed the US economy of 1937 and the Japanese economy of the 1990s. The banking systems of Greece and Spain teeter on the edge of collapse.
None of this matters to the Romney campaign — they are so desperate to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama that they now attempt to throw the entire global economy under the bus rather than risk the political challenge presented by successful resolution of the European crisis. Just as in climate change, the GOP approach to the current economic crisis is to dive into delusions.
“Austerity” is not going rescue the EU, just as “austerity” is not going to help the US economy. To the contrary, anybody who understands history will understand that government support of the economy — in Europe and the US — is the key to restoring the sustainable prosperity we all seek.
The economic policies advocated by Mitt Romney would have destroyed GM. The economic policy implemented by Barack Obama saved it. The economic policies advocated by Mitt Romney will destroy the European banking systems and the EU. The economic policy encouraged by Barack Obama will save it. This is the bitter pill that Mitt Romney and his campaign cannot swallow.
This brazenly delusional and flagrantly political attack on President Obama — in a foreign language and in a leading foreign newspaper — in the midst of a delicate, fragile, and enormously important diplomatic crisis is despicable. Mr. Romney and all Americans should be ashamed and appalled.
Discuss
16 Comments . Leave a comment below.…that one of Romney’s advisors is now “apologizing for America”? I thought Romney was against such things:)
Is here:
The Japanese government spent and spent, and the BOJ eased and eased.
Japan would be the best example of Keynesian pump priming of the past 50 years. If it had worked.
The ultimate collapse of the Japanese economy in 1997 was a direct result of “austerity” measures imposed in the hope that they would reduce deficits that were climbing in a “post-bubble recession”. Sound familiar? It failed. Utterly. Just as it failed in 1937 when FDR got cold feet and tried similar austerity measures.
Of the voluminous material available (from multiple political perspectives) describing the consequences of this failed attempt at “austerity”, this Financial Times piece is typical (emphasis mine):
So stimulus didn’t work, but stopping it destroyed everything. This is just like the USA where stimulus is never big enough to work.
Face it, stimulus is just a way to expand the roll of public sector workers. It’s just a power grab for the government gang and has never and will never make things better for the whole.
The “austerity” you’re talking about was really nothing more than an end to years– 1992-1996– of Keynesian stimulus spending that achieved nothing.
I don’t even particularly agree with anything else you have written in the post. But this is so glaringly– sun rises in the west- wrong that it undermines your overall point.
I don’t particularly DISAGREE etc….
The Japanese recession began a long time before 1997 and actually the Japanese economy has performed better than many other countries 2002-2012, though that is not saying much.
In theory if government spending was that important an input they should never have fallen into recession because they had the government faucets full blast all through the 80′s
In this analysis from Japan itself you can see of some of the factors which may have contributed.
http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/papers/research-review/027.html
I don’t think the repeated references to 1937 to justify a new stimulus are valid. The world/US is a different place now.
I agree that the Japanese economy was in recession in the early nineties, after two speculative bubbles burst. There are many parallels between the Japanese policies that led to those bubbles and the US policies of the prior administration.
The point is that the Japanese government thought, wrongly, that “austerity” would reduce their burgeoning deficit in 1997. It was precisely the wrong answer, and the Japanese deficit instead exploded. It was only after they reversed course that they got back on track.
I agree that world/US is a different place now than in 1937. We now have the benefit of Keynesian economics, an analysis tool that was unavailable to the US government of 1937. Some of us see the results of the failed “austerity” dogma of 1937, some of us don’t.
The spike in wealth concentration of today’s US economy last occurred during the Gilded Age runup to the Great Depression. The economic policies advocated by the GOP today bear a striking resemblance to the failed policies of Herbert Hoover. In my view, these factors combine to make the experience of 1937 very relevant to today’s economy.
Significantly, the European governments come to the same conclusion and are acting to shore up the banking systems of Spain and Greece (among others). The GOP, this time in the person of Glenn Hubbard, shamefully chooses to betray President Obama, America, and the world’s economy rather than confront the political reality that President Obama is correct and the GOP is wrong.
This reality has devastating political consequences for the Romney campaign and the GOP knows it.
and translate them into dubious political conclusions.
Keynes said run surpluses during the good times and deficits during the bad times.
He didn’t say run deficits during the good times and larger deficits during the bad times.
I would say that your opinion is that in any Obama vs Romney question Obama is right 100% of the time and Romney wrong 100% of the time.
I would suggest that gray is a more appropriate color for most economic issues, but I know you like to drop econmic talking points like they are 100% fact,
From Wikipedia:
Who does this sound like, but the biggest deporter of Mexican citizens in US history, President Obama?
You and I can debate this all we want. I’m mystified by the quote you pulled from Wikipedia. What is your claim? The GOP has been beating the anti-immigration drum, not President Obama. Herbert Hoover forced half a million of America’s most powerless citizens back to Mexico. Did it work? Of course not. Yet the GOP would do the same. It seems to me that you’re making my case — today’s GOP is attempting to replay Herbert Hoover’s failed policies.
In any case, the timing and forum of Mr. Hubbard’s brazenly political attack are shameful.
This is only par for the course for a GOP that consistently uses and and every possibility to seek to undermine Obama. The most amazing display was the invitation to Netanyahu to deliver a joint address to Congress. Has a foreign political leader ever been brought to deliver an address to congress with the express intent of trying to embarrass the President of the United States? The great part: Republicans get to do this without being called out by any of the flaccid pseudo pundits.
is that you use a few select bits of information to state a conclusion, and act like it’s for certain the only correct answer.
Will Romney deport people? He says he will. Does that make him Hoover II? No.
Is Obama currently carrying out a Hoover-like policy of massive deportations? Yes.
But in your world Obama= 100% right.
You make statements like
“There are many parallels between the Japanese policies that led to those bubbles and the US policies of the prior administration.” that totally misrepresent history. Did Bush policies help create the bubble? Yes, but only one part of the story.
So I assume you’re on board with Obama’s “everything is Bush’s fault”
We will never get anywhere without honest debate and there’s no indication that is coming (I know, 100% the Republicans fault).
No one cares about Hubbard. I am highly engaged and I nver heard of him. I bet Romney has dozens (if not hundreds) of “senior advisors.”
According to pieces like this, the feds deported about 400,000 (not 500,000) in 2011. That number includes a significant number of illegal immigrants arrested at the border and returned after being held for less than 48 hours. This is a far cry from the forced migrations imposed by Herbert Hoover and advocated by the today’s GOP.
I didn’t say that Mitt Romney would deport people. I said, instead, “[t]he GOP has been beating the anti-immigration drum”. That’s a simple fact; it is simply true. The GOP, like Herbert Hoover, has chosen to scapegoat poor and powerless immigrants rather than constructively engage the enormous challenges that face us.
Honest debate? You must be joking. The GOP leadership promised to do everything in its power to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama years ago, and has done so.
The GOP campaign, from the get-go, has been a campaign that panders to very worst elements of the US electorate. It has been a campaign that demonstrates, over and over, the desire of ALL the GOP candidates to throw all of us under the bus in their headlong and self-serving lust for power.
This latest sorry episode is only the most recent example of the disgraceful state of today’s GOP.
See, when you put words in quotes like that, you aren’t implying, or paraphrasing, or suggesting – you’re outright claiming that the person named actually said those exact words. Unless you can link to a video or document where Obama said the words “everything is Bush’s fault,” you’re making a false claim. That makes you a liar, doesn’t it? Why do you want to come here and lie to us?
The Nixon campaign sabotaged the Paris Peace Accord talks, prolonging the Vietnam War.
http://hnn.us/articles/60446.html
So hey, Mitt’s not as bad as Nixon.
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