
Get ready for a lost decade - ckinnan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123007755316531663.html
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tokenadult
My all-time favorite HN comment about this issue:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=329218>

I felt a lot better after reading this.

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pg
I'd bet not, actually. The lost decade in Japan was due to unique structural
problems in the Japanese economy. The current recession is just a classic
speculative bubble. A bad one, certainly, but not qualitatively different from
the speculative bubbles the west has been bouncing back from since the 17th
century.

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veteran
no denial about speculative bubble but with abysmal savings, lack of
educational resources, and near certain evaporation of low skilled jobs not
sure - when it bounces back to what level it can go and how sustainable bounce
back will be.. fundamental problems must be acknowledged and tackled..

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russell
Fear mongering among the investor class, sweeping generalizations to prove
that Obama is going to screw up. For example, he thinks giving money to banks
was a good idea, but asking them to lend it is bad. I thought the whole idea
of the bailout was to resolve the liquidity crisis. Without lending you still
have a liquidity crisis. And the article is a little short on alternative
policies.

~~~
Prrometheus
>"he thinks giving money to banks was a good idea, but asking them to lend it
is bad:

Giving banks money was to prevent further financial collapse and panic.
Forcing them to lend money to people that they don't think can afford it
sounds like deja vu, this time with government backing. I couldn't think of a
more short-sighted policy. Talk about not learning from history, and in this
case history is 2006.

Furthermore, he says:

>"Large "confidence" costs were always destined to flow from the extreme steps
being taken, even if advisable, to prop up the economy. The federal
government's alternating takeovers and bailouts of companies are inherently
destabilizing and create massive uncertainty in investors and businesses."

One of the reasons that economists who study the matter think the Great
Depression took so long to end was that the sudden, drastic, and unpredictable
actions of the New Deal created uncertainty and reduced business investment.
It is certainly a valid point to keep in mind with a President promising a
"Green New Deal" and a "New New Deal".

Obama hasn't got in office yet, but his stated ideology is certainly troubling
to me.

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jderick
Ugh. Is this really the WSJ? I thought they used to only print stuff like this
in the anonymous opinion columns.

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DanielBMarkham
It says at the top "Wall Street Journal. Opinion Journal"

It has no byline. At the bottom it says "Please add your comments to the
Opinion Journal forum."

Not sure how much more they could do to tell folks that this is an editorial.
Seems like this misconception happens a lot, though.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=381821>

~~~
gojomo
It does have a byline and a dot-picture of the author, to the right of the
title: "By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR."

So by the conventions of newspaper editorial pages, it is the opinion of the
author, not the opinion of "the paper". (It is still generally the sort of
opinion the WSJ has always favored.)

~~~
davidw
He works for "The Paper", though:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holman_W._Jenkins_Jr>

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gamble
We've already lost one decade. Why not another?

