That, it seems, is the economic prognosis of the Obama financial team, looking ahead at a total global “demand collapse” and the total failure of fragile states like Pakistan.
the sense I get from them is that they are very worried that the economy will get a lot worse before it gets better. Not just worse… a lot worse. As in — double digit unemployment without the wiggle factors. Huge declines in aggregate demand. Significant, persistent deficits. That’s one reason why the Obama administration seems to be open to listening to every economist with an idea and is stocking the staff with the leading lights of the field. . . .
Where the discussion isn’t going, at least in public, (or the PR level), is the possibility that the first foreign policy crisis the administration will face will be the complete economic collapse of a large, unstable nation. To be sure, Pakistan is nearly broke, and U.S. policy makers seem to be aware of that; but a worldwide demand crisis could lead to social unrest in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, Singapore, the Ukraine, Japan, Turkey or Egypt (which is facing an internal political crisis of epic proportions already). The U.S. won’t have the resources to, say, engineer the rescue of the peso again, or intervene in Asia as in 1997.
Team Obama may believe this. And they may be right. But it probably doesn’t hurt their cause to make people think they believe this. If things do get much worse, they can say they anticipated it. If things improve, they can take credit for a heroic and historic rescue. (See, “Committee to Save the World.” ca. 1999.)
To a number of smart people, all this seems like too much “depression lust.”
