Stuck in the Muddle
Like anyone who pays attention to business and financial news, I am in a state of high economic anxiety. Like everyone of good will, I hoped that President Obama’s Inaugural Address would offer some reassurance, that it would suggest that the new administration has this thing covered.
Paul Krugman
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But it was not to be. I ended Tuesday less confident about the direction of economic policy than I was in the morning.
Just to be clear, there wasn’t anything glaringly wrong with the address — although for those still hoping that Mr. Obama will lead the way to universal health care, it was disappointing that he spoke only of health care’s excessive cost, never once mentioning the plight of the uninsured and underinsured.
Also, one wishes that the speechwriters had come up with something more inspiring than a call for an “era of responsibility” — which, not to put too fine a point on it, was the same thing former President George W. Bush called for eight years ago.
But my real problem with the speech, on matters economic, was its conventionality. In response to an unprecedented economic crisis — or, more accurately, a crisis whose only real precedent is the Great Depression — Mr. Obama did what people in Washington do when they want to sound serious: he spoke, more or less in the abstract, of the need to make hard choices and stand up to special interests.
That’s not enough. In fact, it’s not even right.
Thus, in his speech Mr. Obama attributed the economic crisis in part to “our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age” — but I have no idea what he meant. This is, first and foremost, a crisis brought on by a runaway financial industry. And if we failed to rein in that industry, it wasn’t because Americans “collectively” refused to make hard choices; the American public had no idea what was going on, and the people who did know what was going on mostly thought deregulation was a great idea.
Or consider this statement from Mr. Obama: “Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed.”
The first part of this passage was almost surely intended as a paraphrase of words that John Maynard Keynes wrote as the world was plunging into the Great Depression — and it was a great relief, after decades of knee-jerk denunciations of government, to hear a new president giving a shout-out to Keynes. “The resources of nature and men’s devices,” Keynes wrote, “are just as fertile and productive as they were. The rate of our progress towards solving the material problems of life is not less rapid. We are as capable as before of affording for everyone a high standard of life. ... But today we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.”
But something was lost in translation. Mr. Obama and Keynes both assert that we’re failing to make use of our economic capacity. But Keynes’s insight — that we’re in a “muddle” that needs to be fixed — somehow was replaced with standard we’re-all-at-fault, let’s-get-tough-on-ourselves boilerplate.
Remember, Herbert Hoover didn’t have a problem making unpleasant decisions: he had the courage and toughness to slash spending and raise taxes in the face of the Great Depression. Unfortunately, that just made things worse.
Still, a speech is just a speech. The members of Mr. Obama’s economic team certainly understand the extraordinary nature of the mess we’re in. So the tone of Tuesday’s address may signify nothing about the Obama administration’s future policy.
On the other hand, Mr. Obama is, as his predecessor put it, the decider. And he’s going to have to make some big decisions very soon. In particular, he’s going to have to decide how bold to be in his moves to sustain the financial system, where the outlook has deteriorated so drastically that a surprising number of economists, not all of them especially liberal, now argue that resolving the crisis will require the temporary nationalization of some major banks.
So is Mr. Obama ready for that? Or were the platitudes in his Inaugural Address a sign that he’ll wait for the conventional wisdom to catch up with events? If so, his administration will find itself dangerously behind the curve.
And that’s not a place that we want the new team to be. The economic crisis grows worse, and harder to resolve, with each passing week. If we don’t get drastic action soon, we may find ourselves stuck in the muddle for a very long time.
保羅．克魯曼專欄 帶美走出經濟泥淖 歐巴馬要加把勁
像所有關注財經新聞的人，我處於高度經濟焦慮的狀態。像所有懷有善意的人，我原先期盼歐巴馬總統廿日的就職演說會帶給我們一些寬慰。可是結果卻非如此。我聽過演說後，反而對新政府的經濟政策方向更沒有信心。
當然，就職演說的內容並無任何大錯，雖然對那些仍盼望歐巴馬推動全民健保的人而言，歐巴馬只談到健保的成本龐大，未免令人失望。我也希望這篇演講稿的捉刀者能想出更激勵人心的話，而不只是呼籲「重塑負責任的文化」。
不過，我對這席就職演說真正挑剔的地方在於，談到經濟問題，它只是老生常談。面對一場前所未見的經濟危機，歐巴馬做了華府政治人物都會做的事：他以抽象措詞大談須做困難抉擇，對特殊利益團體說不。
然而，這麼說並不夠，甚至有不對之處。
歐巴馬在演說中把當前經濟危機部分歸咎於「我們的集體失敗，未能做困難抉擇，讓國家準備好迎接新時代」，但我根本不了解他的意思。歸根結底，這場危機是金融業如脫韁野馬般失控造成，才不是因美國人「集體」拒絕做困難抉擇所導致；美國大眾本來根本不曉得出了什麼事，而那些曉得出了事的人卻還多半認為，解除金融管制是很棒的主意。
再看看歐巴馬另一段話：「和危機爆發前相比，我們勞工的生產力並沒有變低，我們頭腦的創意並沒有減少，對我們財貨和勞務的需求並未比上周、上月或去年降低。我們的能力絲毫未減。不過，我們因循苟且，保護狹隘的利益，拖延不討喜的決定，這個時代無疑已成為過去。」
這段話的前半部，肯定是改寫自凱因斯當年談論全球經濟大蕭條的文字。鑑於過去數十年來人們提到大政府時，總是不假思索地加以批判，如今能夠聽到一名新總統借用凱因斯的話，頗為令人寬慰。不過，歐巴馬在借用凱因斯的話時，卻有重點漏失了。
歐巴馬與凱因斯均斷言，我們未能善用自己的經濟能力，然而凱因斯也談到「我們陷自己於大泥淖中，試圖操縱一部精密的機器，卻不懂得其運作 方式，因而犯下大錯。」凱因斯的洞見力即在於，我們必須設法走出「泥淖」，但歐巴馬在演講中卻代之以那種「我們全難辭其咎，讓我們嚴以待己」的陳腔濫調。
請記得，當年胡佛總統並不怕做不討喜的決定：他面對經濟大蕭條時，敢於削減支出和增稅。可惜的是，這麼做只是讓問題變本加厲。
歐巴馬是前總統布希口中的「決策者」（the decider），他很快便必須做出一些重大決定。尤其是，他必須決定拯救金融體系的行動要有多大膽，而現在不少經濟學家認為，由於金融體系的前景急遽惡化，為了解決危機，新政府勢必要把若干大銀行暫時收歸國有。
那麼，歐巴馬準備好了嗎？或者他在就職演說中的老生常談乃顯示，他要等到全民都具有共識後才出手？若是如此，他的政府將會發現自己趕不上大趨勢，從而陷國家於險境。
這並非我們樂見的情況。隨著時間一周一周過去，這場經濟危機只會變得益加嚴重，更難解決。如果我們不趕快採行大動作，我們可能會發現自己陷於泥淖中好長一段時間。
（克魯曼為美國普林斯頓大學教授，《紐約時報》專欄作家。本報國際新聞中心王嘉源摘譯）
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