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Monday, March 10, 2003
Head down...bulling forward.
I used to have a basset named Cooder. He was fairly smart by basset standards, but also incredibly stubborn, even using those same standards. We had a dog door built into our door so he could go in and out during the few moments he wasn't sleeping on the bed, couch. chair, anything but the floor. Unfortunately we also had a opossum problem, and so, at night, we had to slip a provided metal sheet into the brackets that framed the dog door to keep the opossums outside where they would spend their time staring at us through the sliding glass doors while we watched TV at night. I guess we were like opossum TV.
Anyway, sometimes I would forget that the sheet metal blockade was in and Cooder couldn't get out to the yard. One morning he decided to pay the yard a visit and went to go out the door but his little dome-y head bonked up against metal and wouldn't budge. Instead of backing up and trying again, or barking at me, or even giving up temporarily, he just stood there with his head down trying to bull his way through. I guess he expected that if he stood there long enough it would give way. I watched him for several minutes waiting for him to back up...but he didn't. Head down...feet dug in...head pressed against the door. Finally I gave in and pulled the sheet out and he walked out without even a look back. To him, it was just going to happen.
All of this brings me to Bob Bartley of the Wall Street Journal. Bartley was supposed to have gone out to pasture sometime ago, but I guess they just can't get rid of the guy. Bartley's column this week is headlined:
On Repairing Economic Damage
America is really going to need a tax cut after the war
Skipping over the fact that he sees the war as a fait accompli, I was impressed with his single-mindedness about the tax cut. Bartley has a reputation for cheerleading every tax cut for the rich that comes down the pike, and by golly, he's not going to let deficits as far as the eye can see, as well as the cost of a war (whose expense the Bush administration won't let us see) stop him from getting his tax cut.
Growth tailed off as war worries rose, however, coming in at 1.4% in the final quarter of 2002. In the current quarter, it will be lucky to hit 2%, and at the moment seems headed downward. Business investment has been notoriously laggard, while consumer spending remained strong. But the commerce department reported that personal spending fell in January, and auto makers are now cutting production runs. Manufacturing is weakening, and the economy lost more than 300,000 jobs in February. Consumer sentiment has also been falling and, the Michigan survey center says, would be lower except that everyone expects current problems to be temporary.
Odds still rest against a double-dip recession, but the latest bad news casts a shadow. We can't be sure that the economy will automatically rebound when Saddam Hussein is gone; perhaps the current sluggishness will turn self-perpetuating.
At the same time, the economy's performance in the face of adversity suggests an underlying potential for strong growth. In my book, we shouldn't be content with growth of 3% in real output over the next few years, but should look toward the 5% range. Productivity is surging; despite the dot-com collapse we are realizing the efficiencies of an information economy. The issue is how to unleash this potential, which brings us to the Bush economic proposals.
Actually, the administration has if anything undersold its tax-cut ideas as an antidote for sluggish growth. Outgoing economic adviser Glenn Hubbard struck a careful note in his Economic Report of the President; the tax plan would "enhance the long-term growth of the economy while supporting the emerging recovery." This reflects the current tastes of the economics fraternity--that fiscal legislation can't be enacted fast enough for counter-cyclical policy, which should be left to monetary policy while tax policy looks to the long-term.
N. Gregory Mankiw, set to replace Mr. Hubbard as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, is cut from the same cloth. Yes, he had a dog named Keynes--rather unimaginative, I thought; should have been Maynard. Yes, he said that deficits drive up interest rates and crowd out private investment, but everyone agrees with this as an accounting identity.
Nowhere do I see Bartley calling for spending cuts. Instead, in the face of massive deficits and the uncertainties of war, in duration and cost, Bartley wants his tax cut. And he wants it now before the public starts to see what the cost of war will be.
And nothing can dissuade him. Tax cuts solve everything. Head down, pushing, pushing, and pushing....
Stubborn...and kinda dumb.
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