By Ben Cohen
Like most people, Paul Krugman can't figure out what on earth the stimulus bill is really about, but he holds on to hope that its vagueness might allow room for the correct remedy:
It’s really not clear what the plan means; there’s an
interpretation that makes it not too bad, but it’s not clear if that’s
the right interpretation.
The plan deserves praise for what isn’t in it, at least as far as I can tell. There doesn’t seem to be provision for mass purchases of toxic waste at premium prices; there also doesn’t seem to be a massive “ring-fencing” guarantee against private losses on bad assets. In that sense the plan is better than what the last few weeks of leaks led us to expect........
So what is the plan? I really don’t know, at least based on what we’ve seen today. But maybe, maybe, it’s a Trojan horse that smuggles the right policy into place.
