by Zoë Pollock
Frank Rich comes out swinging in his New York Magazine debut:
There’s not much Obama can do to alter the economy by 2012, given the debt-ceiling fight, the long campaign, and nihilistic Capitol Hill antagonists opposed to any government spending that might create jobs and, by extension, help Obama keep his own. But the central question before the nation couldn’t be clearer: Who pays? The taxpayers bailed out the elite; now it’s the elite’s turn to return the favor. Massive cuts to the safety net combined with scant sacrifice from those at the top is wrong ethically and politically. It is, in the truest sense, un-American.
Derek Thompson disagrees with the economic argument, noting that "unemployment suffers today not because of, but independent of, Wall Street's success":
First, there is little evidence that money on Wall Street hurts job creation. In fact, there is every reason to believe that the correlation, whatever its strength, goes the opposite way. When banks have more money, they have more money to lend, and companies have more money to spend. Wall Street was fabulously profitable in the 2000s when unemployment was below 5%. … The unjust reality of things is that when Wall Street falls, the economy falls; but when Wall Street picks itself up, the workforce doesn't necessarily follow.
Taibbi supports Rich's larger point:
More and more, I hear that Obama’s hands-off-Wall-Street policy is a matter of concern within what used to be his own circle – Beltway professionals, intellectuals, lobbyists, academics, etc. Pretty clearly, that concern is bleeding into the mainstream press now. It’ll be interesting to see if Rich is right about it bleeding into the voter pool next.
The Dish 