Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

He didn't seem distracted, like he was thinking about lunch, and he didn't seem to be deflecting responsibility, but taking it. This was a relief, and rather unusual in a Washington politician, or pretty much any politician. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, when he speaks, always looks like he's thinking, "Are they believing me?" and "How's this playing?" Barney Frank, in interviews, often looks like he's thinking, "I'm bigger than you, don't bore me." And Harry Reid looks like he's telling himself, "Remember—use your hands in the frame." There's some mad media coach out there telling our political figures to continually gesture with their hands within the TV frame, which is to say just below their heads. Everyone's doing it. They must stop. They look like Marcel Marceau playing happy and sad. It doesn't work with words! Nothing works that isn't authentic.

It struck me as I watched that Obama, in giving a substantive economic speech just 11 days before his inaugural address, was trying to clear away a lot of brush, and giving the outlines of his plan in advance so as not to weigh down his inaugural with phrases like "solar panels and wind turbines," "public-private partnership" and "computerized medical records." So much of modern rhetoric is boring because so many modern phrases are ugly.

-- PEGGY NOONAN

With the recession in full swing, the nation’s employers shed 524,000 jobs in December, the government reported Friday, and a rapidly deteriorating economy promised more significant losses in the months ahead. December’s job losses brought the total for 2008 to 2.6 million, spanning a recession that started 12 months ago.

The unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent in December from 6.8 percent in November and 5 percent last April, when the recession was four months old and just beginning to bite. More than 11 million Americans are now unemployed, and their growing ranks seem likely to put pressure on President-elect Barack Obama and Congress to act quickly on a stimulus package that mixes tax cuts and public spending.

-- LOUIS UCHITELLE

Not only has the unemployment rate risen sharply to 7.2%, but the number of workers only able to find part time jobs (or have had their hours cut for economic reasons) is now over 8 million.

Of course the U.S. population is significantly larger today (about 305 million) than in the early '80s (about 228 million) when the number of part time workers almost reached 7 million, but the rapid increase in part time workers is pretty stunning.

-- CALCULATED RISK

Fewer than a dozen prominent economists saw this economic train wreck coming — and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, an economist famous for his academic research on the Great Depression, was notably not among them. Alas, for the real world, the few who did warn us about the train wreck got no more respect from the rest of their colleagues or from decision-makers in business and government than prophets usually do.

. . . Professor [Robert J.] Shiller finds an explanation in groupthink, a term made popularized by the social psychologist Irving L. Janis. In his book Groupthink (1972), the latter had theorized that most people, even professionals whose career ostensibly thrives on originality, hesitate to deviate too much from the conventional wisdom, lest they be marginalized or even ostracized.

-- UWE E. REINHARDT

President-elect Barack Obama explained why the nation needs aggressive action to deal with the economic crisis, and he’s right. But his economic plan falls well short of what’s needed.

-- PAUL KRUGMAN

Since there is no historical experience to tell us how a stimulus package should work, economists’ prescriptions are all over the map. The problem is overload.

-- DAVID BROOKS

Confronted with intense skepticism on Capitol Hill over the $700 billion financial rescue program, Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy F. Geithner and President-elect Barack Obama's economic team are urgently overhauling the embattled initiative and broadening its scope well beyond Wall Street, sources familiar with the discussions said.

. . . [The] new approach that would expand the program's aid to municipalities, small businesses, homeowners and other consumers. With lawmakers stewing over how Bush administration officials spent the first $350 billion, Geithner has little chance of winning congressional approval for the second half without retooling the program, the sources added.

-- DAVID CHO

At the end of the day, Obama's name will be associated with an epically large stimulus package that may, in the end, do be too little, too late. Late last year, Obama hoped that the Democratic House and Senate would come to quick agreement on spending, and, by January 20, a bill would be on his desk. But aides say that the scale of the work exceeded their original expectations. It's just not that easy to figure out how to stimulate an economy in this condition. In a normal recession, small tax cuts might boost savings, which, if the economy were growing, would be fine. But Obama needs Americans to spend, spend, spend, and not to save. And Americans, worried about mortgages, debts and the falling stock market, are keeping their cash in their mattresses. When people save a tax cut, aggregate demand is unaffected. But people, in this deep, deep recession, are demand-starved; they need money to pay for basics like their mortgage payments. The thinking, then, is that no one will save the money.

-- MARC AMBINDER

Here is Obama -- and you've got to give him credit for cajones -- declaring in a speech that not only should Congress enact the most far-reaching economic recovery plan in American history, in accordance with the priorities that he has outlined, but that it should swiftly enact the plan without the partisan sniping and horse-trading that is the traditional life's blood of Capitol Hill politics.

In other words, the president-elect wants to reverse the economic crisis and erase what he calls "the worn-out dogmas . . . the old ideological battles" -- all in one fell swoop. Whew. This is I gotta see.

-- DICK POLMAN

To make a crassly political point, the timing of recessions matters. One of the rarely-discussed factors in the failure of Clinton's early initiatives was that the recession that powered his candidacy abandoned his presidency. His early proposals were developed in a moment o acute economic anxiety -- when he took office, the unemployment rate was almost 8 percent, though the recession's peak had been a few month's earlier -- but by the time they made reached Congress, the recession had ended and the fears had eased. By 1994, the unemployment rate had returned to the low-6s and high-5s. Obama, conversely, is taking office just as the recession really hits, and will be selling his policies at the moment of maximum necessity.

-- EZRA KLEIN

Top photograph by Lawrence Jackson/The Associated Press