Naked Capitalism has the article Clinton’s Speech on “The Economy”: Where’s the Beef? For me, it was more analysis than I had the patience to read. Feel free to read as much as you have the time and patience for. I single out two issues from the article that I find most striking.

Democrats must abandon the view that balanced budgets and surpluses are a sign of virtue; they are not. And until they do, they will be in the policy straitjacket that they helpfully donned after people like the Peterson Institute helpfully held it for them; always a grand bargain of one sort or another; always “pay for.” How did FDR help win World War II, after all? By cutting domestic spending? With a balanced budget? Fiscal policy matters only for the effects it produces in the real economy.
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Also pervasive is lack of agency: There is a “crisis.” Why? For whom? But it “recedes.” Why? For everybody?

The first point is one that I often make on this blog. That’s not a coincidence as Naked Capitalism frequently makes this point. New Economic Perspectives also makes this point frequently. Both Naked Capitalism and I read the New Economic Perspectives blog.

The lack of agency issue is a trick that many Democrats and Neoliberals (meaning not liberals at all) use to hide the fact that someone must have done these awful things. They didn’t just happen. There is someone who has to be held accountable for the outcome of their evil actions. Could the deregulation king himself, Bill Clinton, be blamed for any of these problems?