1106 Obama’s trap

November 6, 2009, 9:50 am

Obama’s trap
オバマの罠
Back in the first few months of the current administration, when I was writing piece after piece urging the new administration to adopt a more aggressive economic policy, what I had very much in my mind — and wrote about on a few occasions — was the possibility of a sort of political economy trap. If unemployment continued to rise, I feared, Congress wouldn’t draw the right conclusion — that we needed more stimulus. Instead, the verdict would be that Obama’s economic policies weren’t working, so we needed to do less. And high unemployment would also lead to Democratic electoral losses, further undermining the ability to act (since the fact is that today’s GOP is the party of economic ignorance). The result would be a persistently depressed economy, and a fading out of Obama’s promise.
現大統領が就任した当初に、私は大統領により刺激的な経済対策を施すことを促すメールを書いていた。同時に幾つかの政治的な経済失策の可能性についても言及していた。仮に失業率が上昇し続けた場合、議会は正しい結論を出すことはできないだろう。一方、オバマの経済政策は機能していないという評価になったら、何もなすことができない。　高い失業率は、民主主義選挙の意味がなくなり、政治の活動能力を減退させてしまう（事実、現在のＧＯＰは経済の無知の仕業だ。）
その結果、経済は引き続き低調で、オバマのマニフェストも色あせてしまう。


I really, really wish I had been wrong about this — and for a while, as banks seemed to regain their footing and stocks went up, it looked as if the administration’s softly, softly policy might work out after all. But on the things that truly matter, above all jobs, reality has played out even worse than I feared. Today the unemployment rate passed 10%, a sort of brutal milestone.
私は、本当にこの予見が外れることを切望している。　しばらくして、銀行が持ち直し始め、株価も騰がって来た。最終的に大統領の政策が次第に功を奏してきたのである。しかし、本当に重要なことは、あらゆる仕事において、私が懸念していた以上に現状が悪化していることである。
今日の失業率は悪く見積もると10％を越えている。


The thing to do, I guess, is to keep making the case for doing more; in particular, we can hope that centrist Democrats will finally realize that timid economic policies are hurting their own electoral prospects. But it’s an uphill fight.
するべきことは、できることを何でもすることだ。特に民主党中道派は、臆病な経済政策は自身の選挙支持者を傷つけることになると理解するだろう。　苦戦はするだろうがね。


Who’s to blame? The buck stops with the president. But did his economic advisers make it clear to him that the proposed stimulus was way short of what the math suggested we needed, even given what was known in January? Or was Mr. Obama really led to believe that his stimulus proposal was as bold as he claimed it was?
誰のせいか？


I don’t know. But I’ve got a sick feeling about the whole situation.