Basic Economics

If you take $400 per week away from the 20 million people most likely to spend it, businesses lose well over $30 billion in sales every month.  If you're trying to revive a cratering economy, that's really a pretty dumb idea — but that's the Republican proposal for "helping" the unemployed.

Granted, many of the unemployed currently are collecting more in unemployment benefits than they earned while they were working, which might make them hesitant to return to their crappy jobs – mostly "heroic" ones like cashier, busboy, and pedicurist.  Sorry – no extra pay for your added risk.  Many more will stay unemployed because their jobs have disappeared, and aren't coming back any time soon.

While some Republicans in Congress must see their $200 proposal as a starting point in a negotiation, the hard right would like to end the benefit entirely.  They play on the politics of resentment, which may be the defining feature of the Tr*mpian base: "Why should somebody else get something if I'm not getting it — especially those people?"  Needless to say, opponents of enhanced unemployment benefits will masquerade as "fiscal hawks," but one can't help but notice how their hawkishness waxes and wanes depending on who gets the money being spent.

Crank up the deficit please

I won't even bother to comment on the financial "reform" bill that came out of conference — except to say that the banks that were too big to fail in 2008 are even bigger now, and that everything in the bill depends on the zeal of the regulators, who never were especially zealous in the past.

What really has me steamed at the moment is the Senate's refusal to continue Medicaid assistance to the states, and to extend unemployment benefits. This is not the time to force state and local governments to lay off large chunks of their workforces, nor to deprive an unemployed worker of the ability to feed the kids. Being "deficit hawks" makes sense for Republicans, of course. If they can prolong the national misery, they can pick up more seats in the midterm election. A double-dip recession probably could win them the presidency next time around. As for Ben Nelson, I suspect he's just an idiot.

Deficit cutting is getting quite fashionable, though, and even if the United States manages to continue some level of stimulus, Europeans are determined to move the other way. Aggressive budget balancing by the UK, Germany, and France almost certainly will push Europe back into recession. Given that it's a world economy now, they'll drag the rest of us down with them.