Saturday, January 24, 2009

Obama's weekly YouTube address

(BUMPED; UPDATE BELOW.) It's not just radio anymore:



.(H/T: Hot Air.) You really have to ask yourself why the media-strategy geniuses of the Bush administration never thought of doing the weekly radio address via YouTube. Meanwhile, note the new president's justification of his plan:

"I know that some are skeptical about the size and scale of this recovery plan. . . . We won't just throw money at our problems - we'll invest in what works."
"What works"? Apparently not highway construction. Despite all the yadda-yadda-yadda about fixing America's infrastructure, only 3% of the stimulus is targeted for roads and bridges.

A bait-and-switch you can believe in!

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: Donald Douglas calls attention to Harvard economics professor Robert J. Barro's skepticism:
What's the flaw? The theory (a simple Keynesian macroeconomic model) implicitly assumes that the government is better than the private market at marshaling idle resources to produce useful stuff. Unemployed labor and capital can be utilized at essentially zero social cost, but the private market is somehow unable to figure any of this out. In other words, there is something wrong with the price system.
As I've said, it's neo-Keynesianism: The basic misconceptions of Keynes, sprinkled with the magic pixie dust of Hope. My hope is that ordinary Americans are capable of understanding why it won't work.

2 comments:

  1. Good Lord does he need a shave.

    And it's a "weekly radio address" from him now, is it.

    ::shudders::

    Hey, have you seen Pokébama yet?

    ReplyDelete
  2. weekly radio address

    A "weekly youtube address" is what I meant to type...

    ;P

    ReplyDelete