Cramer was heavily in the tank for wunderkind Obama. Now comes the light as if he wasn't warned.

The foundation of that is that the middle class is an infinite free ATM to be tapped at will to pay for everyone else.

hold your breath and turn blue and see if it's long enough to tank the country, totally and completely, into the hands of the likes of Chavez.

The reason Roosevelt did what he did was not because he was a 'nice' guy or an 'intelligent' guy, though he was that. It was because he was confronted with a massive crisis, and, most importantly, an 'aroused' citizenry. Labor agitation was at massive levels. Marxists were running around with pitchforks. Farmers and the unemployed were outraged, and organized. I.E. the populists 'barbarians' were at the gates. So he acted. And stole much of the New Deal from Huey P Long. And philosophically, he was inspired by Keynes.

Obama does not face the same massive movement to his left... yet. He's 'inspired' by Bill Clinton and Ron Reagan, two of deregulations heros. His economic advisors speak Friedmannite with a Keyensian accent. We are still in the early stages of this thing. People have to go from the Internet - and from their homes and factories and neighborhoods, to direct action. THEN you will see a change in Obama.

Gosh, what a shinking violet he is... Obama rams BILLIONS in Stimulus that the CBO says just increases Federal spending and entitlements. Then, he says hurry up and pass PORKY II - the Demo Budget....and then MrTaxEvader the new Treasury Secretary says Socilized Medicine NOW, and O-Bama-san says we need a carbon tax............................... That's timid?

I would think that is a Democrat-to-die-for Agenda!

I for one never confused Obama with an old school New Deal liberal. He ran as the more courtly, less rough around-the-edges Clintonista, and out of the gate that appears to be what we've gotten. In his defense I'd say that after 30 years of unopposed neo-con propaganda, the general public has come to accept as gospel that Government= Always Bad, so this was as far left as the American voter was willing to go.

It remains to be seen whether the Big O will remain a Clintonista however. Circumstances will eventually force him to drift towards the philosophy Lind espouses in the article, because the general voter will at some point get sick of seeing their tax dollars go to prop up a failing financial sector, insurance companies and industrial enterprises with no resulting betterment of their own circumstances. We will want to see more tangible results than what we got with the bank bailout. Obama is a smart guy and, so if he doesn't already know this he will figure it out- and he may be smooth enough to get a public made ignorant by 30 years of neo-con bullshit to see it.

Lind argues for massive research on alternative energy sources to bring down cost. But, such research costs money itself, increasing the cost of these sources, even if paid otu of tax dollars. Where does Lind think this money is going to come from? The fricking tooth fairy?

Liquidity Trap.

The central bank is currently in a liquidity trap, meaning that no additional liquidity pumped into the system view money supply has an expansionary effect on the economy.

The up side to this trap (due to deflation) is that the government can borrow and create money for essentially nothing. There's no near-term risk of inflation.

There's a very good short-paper on the fiscal policy aspects of a Liquidity Trap as a PDF at the link in my signature.

He's only been in office for six weeks and someone is complaining that he's not "liberal" enough. It reminds me of the criticism by those on the hard right that he's "worse that FDR." In reality, he hasn't been in office long enough for anyone to judge how liberal, moderate, or conservative he's gong to be. And particularly because those on the hard right are apoplectic about everything he does and says, those on the left should just shut up and hope that those on the hard right are absolutely right.

as liberal as I am, there was something I liked about Eisenhower, and the Interstates are it!

Seriously, we get the government we deserve, whether we vote for it or not, so in the words of the great Michael Jackson, I'm looking at the man in the mirror. If we want these things, we have to fight for them, and it was ever thus (see "The Grapes of Wrath" "The French Revolution" "The Enlightenment" etc etc etc).

No near-term risk of inflation, true. The fact that we pumped $3 trillion into the money supply from June to September 08 without any real inflationary impact shows that the liquidity trap is real - also shows that no amount of money pumped into the banking industry is going to help, since almost all of that money went directly into the bank's cash holdings.

But there is also no near-term risk of us paying down the debt or creating value to support those dollars. So sooner or later inflationary pressure will rear it's ugly head. And foreign influence over our government will only increase. Of course, it's all going to get blamed on the poor sap who's sitting in the White House at the time, just like the current situation is being blamed entirely on Bush the Lesser instead of Reagon, Bush the Elder, and Clinton, so from an Obama perspective it's all good.

I notice, however, that no one is mentioning that we could increase the availability of credit by reducing government expenditures. Gov't borrows less, more credit available to others. Nah, spend more, borrow more, print more. That's become the American way.

Obama has gone Republican Lite. The stimulus plan is overly reliant upon the tried and failed "tax cut" strategy of the GOP, where some $330 billion is in cuts (with $110 billions to businesses!), making up some 38% of the plan, and investments in infra-structure are only 18% of the plan.

America voted for change in 2008. President Obama, be the change America voted for in 2008!