Obama won't take responsibility for economy

Here is part of an interview that Sean Hannity had with Austan Goolsbee. Personally, I think that this interview was quite telling. In response to Obama's broken promises, Goolsbee blames the bad economy and the high unemployment rate this year on the high price of oil, but when Sean brings up that there was high oil prices during the last year of the Bush administration, Goolsbee wants to have it both ways. Obviously he wants to say that high oil prices caused problems back then, but that has clearly not been what Obama has blamed for the problems in 2008.

Of course back in 2008, Obama blamed the high prices on oil speculators and promised a crack down to reduce prices if he were president. Of course, putting speculators in jail would make things worse, not better, but why isn't Obama doing what he promised here?

Corzine said Obama's plan aims to close the so-called Enron loophole, which exempts some energy speculators who trade electronically from U.S. regulation. It takes its name from the now-collapsed energy firm that benefited from the law. . . .

The loophole is "one example of the special interest politics that put the interests of Big Oil and speculators ahead of the interests of working people," Obama's campaign said in a statement. . . .

As the claims about earthquakes hurting the economy, I thought that all these Keynesians had been arguing that wars and other disasters helped. Remember Krugman's claim:

If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. . . .

Other Democrats point to Hurricanes as a way to create jobs:

Gov. Beverly Perdue (D-NC): "obviously there will be some employment as people rebuild and prepare. This morning they said there's at least 27,000 or 28,000 structures that have an opportunity to be hit by the storm. So, we'll know by Saturday or Sunday. But all of us want jobs, but this isn't a way to get them quite frankly."

Goolsbee's interview with Hannity:

Hannity: What went wrong?

Goolsbee: Respectfully, Sean you are mixing up the time frame there. In the year 2010 which is when most of the clips when the president was saying we were going to grow again. We were growing and over that 17 months we added two-and-a-half million jobs.

Now, at the beginning of this year we get earthquakes, tsunamis, revolutions in the Middle East, European financial crises, now they even have earthquakes out of Washington, D.C. I mean, we've had a series of things that have put some heavy blows and slowed the economy back down again. But, I think it's a little -- I don't think you want to confuse something that is way down and starting to grow out.

Hannity: . . . He said that he was going to create millions of jobs. He said that he would cut the deficit in half. He said the unemployment rate would stay below 8 percent. Those were promises that he made as a candidate, none of which have actually come true. Are you actually going to make the case that the Arab Spring and the Japanese earthquake had a more significant economic impact than say 9/11 on the economy or Katrina on the economy?

Goolsbee: With the price of gas shooting up to four dollars a gallon affected everybody out and I was just very direct way.

Hannity: It happened in the Bush years . . .

Goolsbee: It happened at the end of the Bush years and then preceded the worst financial crisis in all of our lifetimes, so I don't know if that's necessarily the perfect example.

Hannity: Oh, Alright . . .

Goolsbee: We face a downturn where we lose a significant number of jobs 7, 8 pushing up to 9 million in the downturn. But let's not get into a thing where a guy takes your TV up to the balcony drops it off and says that the last I saw the looks fine. When the president takes office we're in the midst of what is now recognized as the worst downturn since we have had data in the 1940s.