Iran will be increasingly exporting a higher percentage of its stagnant or falling oil production and faces an energy crisis.

This is wrong. Iranian exports will shrink in the coming years, and probably go to zero in a decade or less, although the part about an energy crisis is no doubt correct.

Google the Export Land Model - Iranian oil production will stagnate and fall, but their internal consumption will continue to rise, and so exports will fall sharply and then disappear.

Glenn mentioned this recently in one of the comment sections too.

Last point - this is not specifically an Iranian problem. This phenomenon is general. Britain and Indonesia were the most recent oil exporters to flip over to oil importers. Mexico will likely be next, but Iran's days as an exporter are definitely numbered.

I see we disagree on the premise, as your attempt to constrain the debate to how well Obama executed a "good" strategy. I don't think government "stimulus" does anything more than keep failed business models and sales projections afloat for the short term, at greater expense in the long term.

In that case, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

It also set this up to happen again, as management realize that the government will cover any downside to any risk they take. This is the essence of moral hazard. There is no systemic incentive to act responsibly.

I recognize, especially in the case of Wall St., that we had a system of profit privatization and loss sharing among taxpayers, and I agree that is a major problem. I'd solve it somewhat differently than you would, I suspect. I'd like to see wage equalization. But I think it is possible to craft regulations to put a stop to the worst of this sort of thing.

Additionally, I think the global economy is too complex for anyone to understand well enough to manipulate it with any realistic confidence of having the desired effect. Central economic planning failed for the Soviets and it will fail for us. And this is in an ideal world where the people at the wheel are altruistic, which is certainly not the case in any political body. In the real world where the people at the wheel are beholden to monied interests, the inability to know enough to act correctly is compounded by the desire to distort the market in favor of your source of reelection funds.

Hmmm.

I'm inclined to agree with about central planning.

However, we'd better hope that we can find an alternative to capitalism because it is driving us inexorably to catastrophe. Any system in which growth is an intrinsic goal will lead to the same disastrous destination. We are literally destroying the carrying capacity of the earth. I believe a population crash is already inevitable, and the longer and further we push economic growth, we only ensure the crash will be more horrific.

Oh, and Krugman's great, too.

Bush big deficits bad...

Obama big deficits good...

Have you actually bothered to read Krugman? His explanation for why the Bush deficits were bad, and Obama's deficits are good, make perfect sense. Economic conditions in 2001 and in 2009 were very, very different, and that is crucial to his argument.

BTW, while I generally like Krugman, I have some serious issues with him. While he's definitely aware the serious nature of climate change, and seems to be aware of peak oil, he just can't seem to take off his economist hat. He keeps assuming we'll get 2.5% GDP growth out to 2020 or 2050 or whatever. He should know better, and that pisses me off - he's basically feeding the notion that we can be complacent about these challenges and that everything will work out allright, which is both dangerous and inexcusable.

But leave that aside for the moment. In 2001, the US economy was strong, and Clinton left Bush with budget surpluses. What did Bush do? He passes a huge tax cut, the benefits of which accruing largely to the wealthy. This increased inequality (bad) and increased deficits and debt (also bad) at a time when the economy did not need it, and at a time when we could have been reducing the debt burden of the government by leaving existing surpluses in place.

Contrast that with 2009, with the economy in the toilet, and the present danger of cascading banking failures rippling through the economy. Under these conditions, when private sector spending has collapsed, it makes perfect sense for the government to step in and pick up the slack - maintain demand, inject money into the system to keep businesses afloat and keep people employed.

We can argue about whether the Obama stimulus plan was executed well or executed poorly - that is, should the Wall St. firms have been bailed out? Should more controls have been put in place (disallowing bonuses, for example)? Should the stimulus have been bigger? Should different sectors have received more money, and others less? Certainly improvements could have been made.

But I do believe that the 2009 stimulus bill has helped to steady the economy, whatever other faults it may have.

Of course this is about worldwide control of oil. But the old Joe's and professional blinkered propogandist shills like WinSmith and JITA are either purposely blind to that fact or are lying.

Glad we see eye to eye, although it is my experience that most people actually don't understand this kind of thing. Maybe in a forum like this they do (don't know) - if so, so much the better.

I can't really say why WinSmith and JITA, etc. are the way they are. Their mindset is completely foreign to me - trying to have a conversation with them is mostly a waste of time and energy, so I don't usually engage them.