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克鲁格曼给奥巴马的信

就像4/3个世纪以前的法兰克林.罗斯福总统所面临的一样,你即将在这个信念和传统智慧土崩瓦解的时刻走马上任.我们所面临的世界不是你或任何人可以想象的.很多总统面临过各种危机,但很少有总统在他就职的第一天,就要被迫处理如此空前绝后的目前美国眼下的危机.
親爱的总统先生,

就像4/3个世纪以前的法兰克林.罗斯福总统所面临的一样,你即将在这个信念和传统智慧土崩瓦解的时刻走马上任.我们所面临的世界不是你或任何人可以想象的.很多总统面临过各种危机,但很少有总统在他就职的第一天,就要被迫处理如此空前绝后的目前美国眼下的危机.

所以,你应当怎么做呢?

我不想在这封信中针对各种问题提出建议.绝大部分我就紧扣着经济和和它有关的问题.我也要集中提出在你第一年任内你能而且应该做的事情.你这一任的成功失败,很大一部分就决定在你的第一年-特别是你能否紧抓住现在的经济危机做出决断.

经济危机

现在经济的前景有多糟糕? 它几乎比任何人想得都恶劣.

布什执政的经济成长,就像它所表现出来的一样,是由私人的贷款的膨胀所激发出来的;现在信用市场呈现出一片纷乱,商业和消费者都裹足不前,经济是一泄千里.我们所面临的说穿了就是一个就业的大缺口.美国的经济每年应该创造一百万个工作机会,才跟得上它的人口成长.危机前,布什当局每年只能有80万个工作机会-就在去年,我们不但没有创造百万的工作,反而减少了两百万个.我们现在继续着每个月50万个工作的丢失.

从现在的资料和既有状况来看,就业前景的持续恶化没有逐渐缓和的迹象,也就是说,年底时我们可能有1000万以上的工作缺口.换句话说,我们的失业率可能会高达百分之九,如果把那些干最低工资以下工作的人和那些只找到零工的人计算在内,真正的失业率应该高达百分之十五-超过2000万的人苦于失业.

这么严重的衰退让人付出的代价太大了.'预算和优先政策中心'是一个分析政府政策的非党派性的研究机构,最近发表失业率会发展到百分之9-最坏的情况现在似乎离我们不远了.失业率真的到那或超过了该怎么办?多达1000万的中产阶级会被推向贫穷的境地,另外会有600万会变成'极度贫穷',严重的损失使得他们的收入比贫穷的水平还要减半.失去工作的人同时没有了医药保险,使得艰难前行的美国医疗更是雪上加霜,走投无路的病人挤满了医院的紧急病房.同时,数百万计的人们会失去他们的房子.州和地方政府因为失去了许多的财源,会把许多重要的福利删减了.

如果事情就沿着这样的轨道发展下去,总统先生,我们很快地就会站在全国的大灾难之前了.但是以你的职务-自从二战以后没有第二个总统面临这样的工作挑战,可以转移这样的灾难.

你可能问,且慢,不会其他的总统没有碰过经济危机吧?是的,他们是碰过,但是谈到'经济政策',你的前任们并不是决策者.上半个世纪,联储会-多少算是一个独立机构,由专业人士组成,有意地设计成不管什么人当上总统,都可独立作业-事实上管理着每天的同时长期的经济事务.你的同行只要跟着走就是.

还记得1984年的美国经济复苏,当时的总统雷根还得意地说出他的名言:美国又迎来了新的一天吗?事实上经济复苏和雷根毫无关系.他只是跟着政策走而已.真正的工作是由'保尔.沃克尔'完成的,他是1979年卡特时期任用的'联储会'主席(现在你任他主掌你的'经济咨询团队').
首先,沃克尔把通货膨胀给截断了,虽然付出了经济停滞的代价,因此可能断送了1980年卡特想再入主白宫的路.沃克尔一手策划了经济复苏.雷根穿上了飞行装,装扮成一位要翱翔的飞行员,沃克尔才是真正把飞机飞上天而又安全降落的人.

你,换个角度来看,自己得充当这架往下坠的飞机的飞行员,因为现在'联储会'已经丧失了它的魔力了.

拿现在的情况和沃克尔力转经济狂澜的1980年代相比.联储会当时做的唯一一件事,就是印了很多美元(把这些美元贷给了私有银行的账户),然后用这些美元买很多美国国债.这样就把利率降下来了:沃克尔看出了经济需要提升,他很快地做到了把T-Bill从百分之13降至百分之9.政府债卷的利息下降,很快地房产贷款和商业贷款的利率也跟着降了.人们开始消费,不到几个月,经济就从低谷而活跃起来了.经济学家把这个'联储会'发动印刷机到消费,工作和收入的兴起整个的过程叫做'货币转换机制'.1980年代,这个机制运行无误.

而这一次,此转换的机制断裂了.

首先,联储会仍然可以再印钞票,但它无法将利率给降下来.为什么呢?因为利率已经低的不能再低了.就在我写此信的时刻,T-Bill的率是百分之0.005-等于是零了.根本是无从再降了.有人可能认为零利率应该会激起贷款的高潮.但事实是政府本身可以自由借贷,其他人办不到.恐惧操纵着金融市场,过去的一年半,虽然政府的债卷利率跌了大跟斗,但是它之外的世界的贷款的利率还是上升了.特别是,很多商业贷款比一年半联储会还没降息以前还需要付出更高的利率.拿到贷款的商家还暗自庆幸.

还有,就是即使很多的人可以贷到款,他们真的愿意消费吗?市场上有那么多的房子无法出清,房产贷款利息再低,商家根本没有意愿再建新房.生意的投资也是一样:有那么多的办公室都空着,商场找不到房客,工厂空置着,谁还会想增加新的设备?每个地方的有工作的人都担心失业,大家蜂拥到那些廉价商品店,只想节省下几块钱,那些真正能帮助经济恢复的如汽车那样的大物件买卖,基本是无人问津的.

所以我说联储会已经丧失了它的魔力了.伯南克和他的同事们想尽一切办法来暖化已经冻结的信用市场.那么多的'贷款机构'使人眼花缭乱,无从记起.很快的就会闹出笑话,我们大家的信用卡上会有联储会的标志.所有这些可以阻止情况的恶化,更准确地说,没人看得见它能把经济从这种下坠中拉出来.

所以,我们期待着你.

解救经济

曾经面对过类似的一团糟经济的一位总统是罗斯福总统,你可以从他的范例中学到很多.但并不是说你要照着画符.相反地,你要重复他成功的地方,但要避开他的错误.

关于他成功的部分:
罗斯福处理他的时代的经济困境的方式提供了一个很好的模式.和现在一样,那时候政府也要运用纳税人的钱来拯救金融体系.特别是那时的'重建金融公司'起初扮演的角色,就和布什现在的'问题资产解救方案'一样(每个人都知道那7000亿的救市金).像后者一样,前者把那些有资金问题的银行的现金捆绑一起,然后用公众的基金去买那些银行的股票.

罗斯福总统用纳税人的钱去救助金融业和布什当局的做法的一个很大的不同就是:挑明的讲,罗斯福明确地要求公众的钱应该照顾到公众的利益.1935年,美政府拥有1/3的银行股权,罗斯福当局利用这样的所有权位置,坚持银行得帮助经济,迫使银行把它们从政府拿到的钱借贷出去.超乎之上,新出炉的'新政'把很多的钱贷给了商业界,也贷给购屋者以及那些已经拥有房屋的人-让他们重新贷款以减轻负担,从而能保住他们的房子.

今天你能够做同样的事吗?是的,你做得到的.布什当局可能拒绝了任何对银行救助的附加条件,但是,你可以改变这一切.如果银行需要联邦的钱来度过难关,你可以提供给他们,但要要求银行一方也要做到把它们拿到的钱为经济注水加热.给房屋所有者提供帮助.藉房利美和房贷美这两个放贷机构把政府贷来的钱以低价申请转给那些有偿还能力的买屋者.(这俩房去年9月由联邦接管,但是布什当局却很荒唐地不愿意宣布这俩房是以纳税人的信任和信用做担保的,致使向其贷款的门槛太昂贵.)

保守派可能会指控你想要国有化金融体系,甚至有人会叫你是'马克思主义者'.(这经常发生在我身上.)事实是你在名义上,搞得是一种暂时的国有化.这是可行的:长久来说,我们不愿意政府来主持金融业,但目前我们得采用一切可能的办法使得借贷市场重新活跃起来.

这么做会有所帮助,但还是远远不够.你应该竭尽一切地想法解决银行和金融机构的问题.但要把这下滑的经济拉回来,只是给银行和金融界注资是有限的.你必须给关乎工作和薪资的实体经济打一剂强心针.换句话说,你必须好好地把创造新的工作岗位这件事办好-这一点,罗斯福总统从来没有做好.

我这么说听起来好像很奇怪.毕竟,我们都记得1930年代,'工作推广局'在它最高峰的时期,雇用了数百万的人修桥,建学校和水灞.但'新政'的创建工作的工程虽然很有用,但要结束'大萧条',其规模远远不够而且持续性也相差甚远.当经济是如此低迷,我们要把对'预算赤字'的正常考虑抛到一边;罗斯福从来没做到这一点.结果,他是太顾虑了:1933至1936他对经济的扶助力,足以使当时的失业率下降,但不能回到大萧条以前的水平.到了1937年,对赤字的担忧紧紧地扼死了他:虽然经济还是很弱,他接受了加税和节制开支的做法.如此随后造成的严重衰退把他过去数年的成绩都打消了.是那个巨大的称为'二战'的公众就业工程把大萧条终止的,也让那些絮絮叨叨于小钱的人闭嘴了.

从罗斯福那时在'就业'战场上的只有局部成功的教训,就是要你必须放开手来大胆地进行你的就业工程.基本情势是商业和消费者都把他们的支出封住了,使得经济在'需求'上出现了大缺口,这就会造出就业上的锐减-除非由你来停止这个循环.要停止这些,你就要加大支出来填补这个非官方领域的'减缩'的大窟窿..

我们所指的是多大的支出呢?在我告诉你之前,希望你能坐下来听.是这样的,所谓的'全民就业'是指'失业率'不超过百分之五,也可能更少些.但我们现在走的方向是把失业率推向百分之九或者更高.最乐观的估计也认为,政府要支出2000亿一年才能将失业率降一个百分点.你算算看-你可能需要一年支出8000亿才能保证经济的复苏.任何少于5000亿的年支出都不会对经济造成太大的转机.

在经济如此衰弱,很多税收都拿不到的时候,政府这么大规模的支出会使得政府赤字变得吓人.但是太小心翼翼的后果-你这一方面缩手缩脚未能停止这快速下落的经济所造成的失败-可能比那一片红墨来的更让人心惊胆跳.

事实上,就拯救经济而言,你即将面临的最大的问题就是你能否找到足够的创造工作的计划,而且马上付诸实施.传统工作创建工程-如筑路,建政府楼,港口和其它基础设施-是一个创造就业机会很好的办法.但是美国现在有大约不到1500亿等值的建设等着开工动土,它们可以在不到6个月的时间内开动.所以,你必须非常有创造力地-赶快找到许多其它方式把政府的资金注入经济.

尽可能的,你应该把钱花在能带来长久利益的,比如像造桥筑路,会使我们富裕的地方.上升网络的基础设施;升级电网;改善任何医疗体系的关键核心,也就是医疗服务领域的'信息科技'.给地方政府提供援助,避免它们在这关键的时刻错误地减缩该有的投资.但你这么做的同时,一定要记住,所有你这些花费有双重的责任:它造福于未来,但也同时给当下的急剧下跌的经济提供了工作的机会和人民的收入.

你在做好事的同时,也做了成功的事.经济的暴跌伤害人民最深-长期失业的,没有医疗保险的家庭-这些人最有可能把他们收到的经济帮助花费出去的,这对整体经济有着起死回生的功效.所以,帮助这些受苦的人-增加失业救济金,免费食物卷和医疗保险的补助-不光是一件光明正大的事而且是你短期经济计划的激动人心的一部分.

但就是你都做到了这些,在个人支出上还是无法力挽狂澜.所以,是的,你可以暂时地降税.减税的对象应该是低收入和中产的阶级-这不仅是一件正当的该做的事,还有的原因就是他们比富裕的人更需要支出这从天而降的支援.在你竞选时所描绘的对工薪阶层的减税是很合理的手段.

但我们要表明的是:对付经济下滑,减税不是一个行之有效的办法.其中一个原因,就是它不如基础建设钱花的有效,因为我们保证不了消费者拿到退税后会花掉.结果是你得用3000亿来减税以保证减少一个百分点的失业率,那还不如花上2000亿于基础建设上来的实惠.更且,长远来看,你需要更多的税收来进行医疗改革.所以,减税不应该是你的经济复苏计划的核心.它应该是你的创造就业计划捆绑在一起的一部分,要不然,这计划的力道就不够.

现在我诚实地告诉你,就是这些都做到了,你还是免不了看到2009年是很糟糕的一年.如果你能够将失业率降到百分之8,我就认为你成功了一大半.到了2010年.你就会看到经济朝复苏的路上走了.但在那个复苏之前,你要准备些什么呢?

超越危机

危机处理是一回事,而美国需要的不仅是它.罗斯福重建美国.并不止是带领大家渡过了大萧条和战争而已,主要是把我们变成一个比较公正和安全的社会.一方面,他创造了社会安全制度,尤其是,直到今天,'社会安全金制度'还在保护着劳工大众.另一方面,他预见地创造一个公平多了的经济,建立了一个延续数十年的中产阶级社会,一直到保守的经济政策取代,形成新世纪的不平等,一路延续至今.你有一个和罗斯福的伟大成就相比美的选择,而对你的任内最终的判断将在于你是否抓紧了这个选择.

你能给这国家的最伟大的而且是最重要的遗产就是最终你能给我们大家,如同其它发达国家已经拥有的-保证全民医疗.目前的危机给了我们一个客观的教训,在两方面,我们需要一个全民医疗保障.它凸显了和那么容易消失的工作岗位联系在一起的医疗保险是多么的脆弱.大家看的很请楚,目前体制对商业也是不利的-那三家汽车公司不会弄到那么悲惨的境地,如果它们不需要为它的退休和现在的员工缴纳那么高额的医疗费用.你得下令改变这些了;经济危机正好显现了我们的体制需要多大的改变.所以,现在就是时候,通过一个立法,设立一个能照顾每一个人的医疗体制.

新制应该是什么内容呢?一些进步人士坚持我们应该马上采用一套单一付款的制度-全民医健卡.虽然这不失为一个最公平和简便的方法,保证全民得到医疗.但坦白说:单一付费目前在政治上是很难办得到的,简单的说,就是它得动太大的手术.至少在一开始,现在享有很好的私人保险的人是不愿意和这个全民保险交换的,即使将来证明全民保险会是更好.

所以你任内第一年你只要通过一个妥协的方案-一个史上第一个全民医疗保险的原则.你竞选时已提出一个蓝图了.那些有私人保险的人可以选择保留,对低收入的人补助保险,每一个儿童都应该有保险,让每个人都有买入政府保险的选择-一个最终可能会比私人的更便宜而高质量的保险.通过立法去实施,到你任内结束,我们这个全民医疗保险制度就运行无恙了.这样的成就就像罗斯福创立了'社会安全'制度,会永久的造福于美国.

所有这些都需要钱,主要是要付给低收入人的补助,有些人会告诉你,在经济复苏大需支出的时候,国家付不起这么庞大的医疗改革费用.我来告诉你,你该把这些当耳边风的原因.

首先让我们来好好看看经济复苏计划的花费.在你任内,很可能得花上一兆来搞活经济.但是布什却至少浪费了两倍的钱去打那场不必要的战争和为富人们减税.复原计划会很紧凑但暂时,在将来的预算上不会增加太多负担.就这么算吧:长期国债在50年内交付低利,新的国债的一兆元的每年利息大约是300亿,大约是现在联邦预算的1.2%.

其次,我们十分相信医疗改革长远来说会节省费用.我们的旧系统不仅是缺陷百出,它同时是极端没有效率,花费巨额的行政费用-比方说,保险公司投入很多资源来防止那些最需要保险的人拿到它.但在全民医疗体制下,医疗费就会花在它该花的地方,有效地医疗措施才会采用.因为医疗费用的高涨一直是联邦预算中最难处理的一部分,事实告诉我们,医疗改革是势在必行.

但是我们不要低估了长期的政治效应.1993年,克林顿想搞一个全民保健而失败之后,共和党的策略家如威廉.克里斯多夫(现在是我纽约时报的同事)就鼓捣他们的党拒绝任何政治层面的改革;他们争辩说一个成功的医改计划会传达一个信息,就是政府确实能照顾到公众的利益,这样就会把美国大众根本地转向进步的方向.他们是对的-但使保守派们极力反对医改的同样的理由,应该让你下定决心.一定要完成它.

在你拯救了经济之后,最主要的任务就是全民医保.你这一任做到给每个国人提供医保,就可和新政的建立社会安全体制相提并论.但新政还完成了另外一个使命-它造就了一个美国的中产阶级社会.罗斯福治下,美国经历了劳工历史学家所称的'大压缩',使得一般劳工阶层的薪资大大地提高,很大的缩减了收入的不平等.在'大压缩'之前,美国是一个贫富两级的社会;在那之后,其中的大多数人坦承自己是'中产阶级'.今天,这样的成就是很难达成的,但至少你可努力地朝那个方向前进.

'大压缩'是怎么造成的?细说起来太复杂,但一个最主要的原因就是'组织化的劳工'的兴起:1935年到了1945年,工会成员的数目3倍的成长.工会不光是为它的会员们争取较高的工资,它还提高了工人在经济中的谈判力量.那时候.保守派警告薪资的增加会给经济带来灾难性的后果-工会的兴起会夭折就业和经济的成长.事实上,大压缩之后,紧接着战后的大繁荣,把一代的美国人民生活水平翻了一倍.

很不幸地,1970年代把'大压缩'给逆转了,造成美国工人再次失去他们大部分的谈判权利.这个损失主要是世界经济的大环境的改变,因为主要的美制造商面临了很剧烈的国际竞争.但也有一大部分原因是政治造成的,首先是雷根,然后是布什,他们竭尽所能地破坏工人们组织起来.

你可以把这个过程整个翻转过来.显然地,你不会马上看到工会的会员名额一下子变成3倍.但你可以多方面地维护工人的权益.主要一点就是马上着手准备通过一个'雇员自由选择法案',这会使的雇主不易刁难想要成立工会的工人.我知道第一年你可能办不到这些,但你做的那一天,这立法会是美国跨出的一大步,将会使我们的'中产阶级'社会失而复得.

真相与调和

当然还有许多其它需要应对的问题.比方我还没有提到'环境政策',它该是所有问题中最重要的.那是因为我怀疑你的第一年不太可能通过一个全面的计划来应对温度变暖的问题,但不管怎么样,尽量多投入一些对环境有帮助的经费-像对能源效率提升的投资-应包括在最初步的经济复苏的计划中,但我想2009年是弄不出一个全面减少暖室瓦斯效应的计划的.如果我错了,那就更好-我不看好大的环境政策的立即出现,

我也还没谈到外交政策.你的团队非常明白得把伊拉克的战争做个了结-顺便告诉你,每年花在上面的钱就够我们建立全面医疗中所需要的补助费用.你也明白我们也需要把阿富汗的烂摊子好好收拾一下.另外,我简直不愿意谈到'巴基斯坦'-但你必须,祝好运.

还有的就是一个我必须打破我的专业训练来谈的领域.我是一个经济学家,但我也是一个美国公民-就像很多公民一样,过去的8年里,我一直惊恐地看着布什当局背叛美国的理想.如果我们不把这些年所发生的事理清楚,我们怎么也不能把它抛诸脑后.我知道很多你的圈内人士劝你让过去的就过去吧,就像当年他们劝克林顿把雷根-布什时代的丑闻特别是伊朗的反武装事件隐而不露,但我们知道这样做的后果-20年前以国家安全名义滥用权力的同样一批人又回炉在布什二世手下,干下规模更大的勾当.这活生生地印证了哲学家桑塔耶拿所说的:那些不在过去的错误里反省过来的人注定了要犯同样的错误.

所以,这一次,我们要把账算清楚.不是要像中世纪的'猎巫',也不是要搞迫害,而是要像当年南非的'真相与协调委员会'追究'种族隔离'罪行那样.我们需要知道为什么我们打了一场要消灭根本不存在的武器的战争,酷刑变成惯例怎么成为美国政策的,'司法部'怎么成为政治迫害的工具,为什么无耻的腐败不仅在伊拉克蔓延,同时也在国会和白宫盛行.我们知道这些罪恶绝对不是一些辩护者说的是一时的错误,或者只是一小部分害群之马:白宫创造了一种氛围,使得虐俘稀松化,很多地方还可能唆使这样的恶行.把这些说成是'每个人都知道的'的范畴是很不够的-因为很快地,人们就会否认或者忘却,那整个虐俘又有死灰复燃的可能,那些肮脏的故事得放到阳光之下来检视一番.

由国会来检视布什时代的问题可能比较妥当,但你的政府也可在一边,一方面不要用你的影响力来左右它的调查,一方面可以帮助阻止布什当局的阻扰.让国会能收集资料和证人,真相一定要大白.
有个老话,最在意的事物就形成了未来.这个月,我们庆祝你入主白宫;在这危机四伏的时刻,你给大家一个较好的未来的期盼.现在,就要看你能否落实那个期盼.颁布一个比'新政'还要大胆和全面的复苏方案,你不但能扭转经济危机-你还能使美国的未来走上一条更高品质的大道.

Paul Krugman

What Obama Must Do
A Letter to the New President


PAUL KRUGMANPosted Jan 14, 2009 12:17 PM

Dear Mr. President:

Like FDR three-quarters of a century ago, you're taking charge at a moment when all the old certainties have vanished, all the conventional wisdom been proved wrong. We're not living in a world you or anyone else expected to see. Many presidents have to deal with crises, but very few have been forced to deal from Day One with a crisis on the scale America now faces.

So, what should you do?

In this letter I won't try to offer advice about everything. For the most part I'll stick to economics, or matters that bear on economics. I'll also focus on things I think you can or should achieve in your first year in office. The extent to which your administration succeeds or fails will depend, to a large extent, on what happens in the first year — and above all, on whether you manage to get a grip on the current economic crisis.

The Economic Crisis

How bad is the economic outlook? Worse than almost anyone imagined.

The economic growth of the Bush years, such as it was, was fueled by an explosion of private debt; now credit markets are in disarray, businesses and consumers are pulling back and the economy is in free-fall. What we're facing, in essence, is a yawning job gap. The U.S. economy needs to add more than a million jobs a year just to keep up with a growing population. Even before the crisis, job growth under Bush averaged only 800,000 a year — and over the past year, instead of gaining a million-plus jobs, we lost 2 million. Today we're continuing to lose jobs at the rate of a half million a month.

There's nothing in either the data or the underlying situation to suggest that the plunge in employment will slow anytime soon, which means that by late this year we could be 10 million or more jobs short of where we should be. This, in turn, would mean an unemployment rate of more than nine percent. Add in those who aren't counted in the standard rate because they've given up looking for work, plus those forced to take part-time jobs when they want to work full-time, and we're probably looking at a real-world unemployment rate of around 15 percent — more than 20 million Americans frustrated in their efforts to find work.

The human cost of a slump that severe would be enormous. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research group that analyzes government programs, recently estimated the effects of a rise in the unemployment rate to nine percent — a worst-case scenario that now seems all too likely. So what will happen if unemployment rises to nine percent or more? As many as 10 million middle-class Americans would be pushed into poverty, and another 6 million would be pushed into "deep poverty," the severe deprivation that happens when your income is less than half the poverty level. Many of the Americans losing their jobs would lose their health insurance too, worsening the already grim state of U.S. health care and crowding emergency rooms with those who have nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, millions more Americans would lose their homes. State and local governments, deprived of much of their revenue, would have to cut back on even the most essential services.

If things continue on their current trajectory, Mr. President, we will soon be facing a great national catastrophe. And it's your job — a job no other president has had to do since World War II — to head off that catastrophe.

Wait a second, you may say. Didn't other presidents also face troubled economies? Yes, they did — but when it came to economic policy, your predecessors weren't actually running the show. For the past half century the Federal Reserve — a more or less independent institution, run by technocrats and deliberately designed to be independent of whoever happens to occupy the White House — has been taking care of day-to-day, and even year-to-year, economic management. Your fellow presidents were just along for the ride.

Remember the economic boom of 1984, which let Ronald Reagan run on the slogan "It's morning again in America"? Well, Reagan had absolutely nothing to do with that boom. It was, instead, the work of Paul Volcker, whom Jimmy Carter appointed as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1979 (and who's now the head of your economic advisory panel). First Volcker broke the back of inflation, at the cost of a recession that probably doomed Carter's re-election chances in 1980. Then Volcker engineered an economic bounce-back. In effect, Reagan dressed up in a flight suit and pretended to be a hotshot economic pilot, but Volcker was the guy who actually flew the plane and landed it safely.

You, on the other hand, have to pull this plane out of its nose dive yourself, because the Fed has lost its mojo.

Compare the situation right now with the one back in the 1980s, when Volcker turned the economy around. All the Fed had to do back then was print a bunch of dollars (OK, it actually credited the money to the accounts of private banks, but it amounts to the same thing) and then use those dollars to buy up U.S. government debt. This drove interest rates down: When Volcker decided that the economy needed a pick-me-up, he was quickly able to drive the interest rate on Treasury bills from 13 percent down to eight percent. Lower interest rates on government debt, in turn, quickly drove down rates on mortgages and business borrowing. People started spending again, and within a few months the economy had gone from slump to boom. Economists call this process — from the Fed's decision to print more money to the resulting pickup in spending, jobs and incomes — the "monetary transmission mechanism." And in the 1980s that mechanism worked just fine.

This time, however, the transmission mechanism is broken.

First of all, while the Fed can still print money, it can't drive interest rates down. Why? Because those interest rates are already about as low as they can go. As I write this letter, the interest rate on Treasury bills is 0.005 percent — that is, zero. And you can't push rates lower than that. Now, you might think that zero interest rates would lead to an orgy of borrowing. But while the U.S. government can borrow money for free, the rest of us can't. Fear rules the financial markets, so over the past year and a half, as the interest rates on government debt have plunged, the interest rates that Main Street has to pay have mostly gone up. In particular, many businesses are paying much higher interest rates now than they were a year and a half ago, before the Fed started cutting. And they're lucky compared to the many businesses that can't get credit at all.

Besides, even if more people could borrow, would they really want to spend? There's a glut of unsold homes on the market, so there's very little incentive to build more houses, no matter how low mortgage rates go. The same goes for business investment: With office buildings standing empty, shopping malls begging for tenants and factories sitting idle, who wants to spend on new capacity? And with workers everywhere worried about job security, people trying to save a few dollars may stampede into stores that offer deep discounts, but not many people want to buy the big-ticket items, like cars, that normally fuel an economic recovery.

So as I said, the Fed has lost its mojo. Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are trying everything they can think of to unfreeze the credit markets — the alphabet soup of new "lending facilities," with acronyms nobody can remember, is growing by the hour. Any day now, the joke goes, everyone will have a Visa card bearing the Fed logo. But at best, all this activity only serves to limit the damage. There's no realistic prospect that the Fed can pull the economy out of its nose dive.

So it's up to you.

Rescuing The Economy

The last president to face a similar mess was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and you can learn a lot from his example. That doesn't mean, however, that you should do everything FDR did. On the contrary, you have to take care to emulate his successes, but avoid repeating his mistakes.

About those successes: The way FDR dealt with his own era's financial mess offers a very good model. Then, as now, the government had to deploy taxpayer money in order to rescue the financial system. In particular, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation initially played a role similar to that of the Bush administration's Troubled Assets Relief Program (the $700 billion program everyone knows about). Like the TARP, the RFC bulked up the cash position of troubled banks by using public funds to buy up stock in those banks.

There was, however, a big difference between FDR's approach to taxpayer-subsidized financial rescue and that of the Bush administration: Namely, FDR wasn't shy about demanding that the public's money be used to serve the public good. By 1935 the U.S. government owned about a third of the banking system, and the Roosevelt administration used that ownership stake to insist that banks actually help the economy, pressuring them to lend out the money they were getting from Washington. Beyond that, the New Deal went out and lent a lot of money directly to businesses, to home buyers and to people who already owned homes, helping them restructure their mortgages so they could stay in their houses.

Can you do anything like that today? Yes, you can. The Bush administration may have refused to attach any strings to the aid it has provided to financial firms, but you can change all that. If banks need federal funds to survive, provide them — but demand that the banks do their part by lending those funds out to the rest of the economy. Provide more help to homeowners. Use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the home-lending agencies, to pass the government's low borrowing costs on to qualified home buyers. (Fannie and Freddie were seized by federal regulators in September, but the Bush administration, bizarrely, has kept their borrowing costs high by refusing to declare that their bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the taxpayer.)

Conservatives will accuse you of nationalizing the financial system, and some will call you a Marxist. (It happens to me all the time.) And the truth is that you will, in a way, be engaging in temporary nationalization. But that's OK: In the long run we don't want the government running financial institutions, but for now we need to do whatever it takes to get credit flowing again.

All of this will help — but not enough. By all means you should try to fix the problems of banks and other financial institutions. But to pull the economy out of its slide, you need to go beyond funneling money to banks and other financial institutions. You need to give the real economy of work and wages a boost. In other words, you have to get job creation right — which FDR never did.

This may sound like a strange thing to say. After all, what we remember from the 1930s is the Works Progress Administration, which at its peak employed millions of Americans building roads, schools and dams. But the New Deal's job-creation programs, while they certainly helped, were neither big enough nor sustained enough to end the Great Depression. When the economy is deeply depressed, you have to put normal concerns about budget deficits aside; FDR never managed to do that. As a result, he was too cautious: The boost he gave the economy between 1933 and 1936 was enough to get unemployment down, but not back to pre-Depression levels. And in 1937 he let the deficit worriers get to him: Even though the economy was still weak, he let himself be talked into slashing spending while raising taxes. This led to a severe recession that undid much of the progress the economy had made to that point. It took the giant public works project known as World War II — a project that finally silenced the penny pinchers — to bring the Depression to an end.

The lesson from FDR's limited success on the employment front, then, is that you have to be really bold in your job-creation plans. Basically, businesses and consumers are cutting way back on spending, leaving the economy with a huge shortfall in demand, which will lead to a huge fall in employment — unless you stop it. To stop it, however, you have to spend enough to fill the hole left by the private sector's retrenchment.

How much spending are we talking about? You might want to be seated before you read this. OK, here goes: "Full employment" means a jobless rate of five percent at most, and probably less. Meanwhile, we're currently on a trajectory that will push the unemployment rate to nine percent or more. Even the most optimistic estimates suggest that it takes at least $200 billion a year in government spending to cut the unemployment rate by one percentage point. Do the math: You probably have to spend $800 billion a year to achieve a full economic recovery. Anything less than $500 billion a year will be much too little to produce an economic turnaround.

Spending on that scale, at a time when the weakening economy is driving down tax collection, will produce some really scary deficit numbers. But the consequences of too much caution — of a failure on your part to do enough to stop the economy's nose dive — will be even scarier than the coming ocean of red ink.

In fact, the biggest problem you're going to face as you try to rescue the economy will be finding enough job-creation projects that can be started quickly. Traditional WPA-type programs — spending on roads, government buildings, ports and other infrastructure — are a very effective tool for creating employment. But America probably has less than $150 billion worth of such projects that are "shovel-ready" right now, projects that can be started in six months or less. So you'll have to be creative: You'll have to find lots of other ways to push funds into the economy.

As much as possible, you should spend on things of lasting value, things that, like roads and bridges, will make us a richer nation. Upgrade the infrastructure behind the Internet; upgrade the electrical grid; improve information technology in the health care sector, a crucial part of any health care reform. Provide aid to state and local governments, to prevent them from cutting investment spending at precisely the wrong moment. And remember, as you do this, that all this spending does double duty: It serves the future, but it also helps in the present, by providing jobs and income to offset the slump.

You can also do well by doing good. The Americans hit hardest by the slump — the long-term unemployed, families without health insurance — are also the Americans most likely to spend any aid they receive, and thereby help sustain the economy as a whole. So aid to the distressed — enhanced unemployment insurance, food stamps, health-insurance subsidies — is both the fair thing to do and a desirable part of your short-term economic plan.

Even if you do all this, however, it won't be enough to offset the awesome slump in private spending. So yes, it also makes sense to cut taxes on a temporary basis. The tax cuts should go primarily to lower- and middle-income Americans — again, both because that's the fair thing to do, and because they're more likely to spend their windfall than the affluent. The tax break for working families you outlined in your campaign plan looks like a reasonable vehicle.

But let's be clear: Tax cuts are not the tool of choice for fighting an economic slump. For one thing, they deliver less bang for the buck than infrastructure spending, because there's no guarantee that consumers will spend their tax cuts or rebates. As a result, it probably takes more than $300 billion of tax cuts, compared with $200 billion of public works, to shave a point off the unemployment rate. Furthermore, in the long run you're going to need more tax revenue, not less, to pay for health care reform. So tax cuts shouldn't be the core of your economic recovery program. They should, instead, be a way to "bulk up" your job-creation program, which otherwise won't be big enough.

Now my honest opinion is that even with all this, you won't be able to prevent 2009 from being a very bad year. If you manage to keep the unemployment rate from going above eight percent, I'll consider that a major success. But by 2010 you should be able to have the economy on the road to recovery. What should you do to prepare for that recovery?

Beyond the Crisis

Crisis management is one thing, but America needs much more than that. FDR rebuilt America not just by getting us through depression and war, but by making us a more just and secure society. On one side, he created social-insurance programs, above all Social Security, that protect working Americans to this day. On the other, he oversaw the creation of a much more equal economy, creating a middle-class society that lasted for decades, until conservative economic policies ushered in the new age of inequality that prevails today. You have a chance to emulate FDR's achievements, and the ultimate judgment on your presidency will rest on whether you seize that chance.

The biggest, most important legacy you can leave to the nation will be to give us, finally, what every other advanced nation already has: guaranteed health care for all our citizens. The current crisis has given us an object lesson in the need for universal health care, in two ways. It has highlighted the vulnerability of Americans whose health insurance is tied to jobs that can so easily disappear. And it has made it clear that our current system is bad for business, too — the Big Three automakers wouldn't be in nearly as much trouble if they weren't trying to pay the medical bills of their former employees as well as their current workers. You have a mandate for change; the economic crisis has shown just how much the system needs change. So now is the time to pass legislation establishing a system that covers everyone.

What should this system look like? Some progressives insist that we should move immediately to a single-payer system — Medicare for all. Although this would be both the fairest and most efficient way to ensure that all Americans get the health care they need, let's be frank: Single-payer probably isn't politically achievable right now, simply because it would represent too great a change. At least at first, Americans who have good private health insurance will be reluctant to trade that insurance for a public program, even if that program will ultimately prove better.

So the thing to do in your first year in office is pass a compromise plan — one that establishes, for the first time, the principle of universal access to care. Your campaign proposals provide the blueprint. Let people keep their private insurance if they choose, subsidize insurance for lower-income families, require that all children be covered, and give everyone the option to buy into a public plan — one that will probably end up being cheaper and better than private insurance. Pass legislation doing all that, and we'll have universal health coverage up and running by the end of your first term. And that will be an achievement that, like FDR's creation of Social Security, will permanently change America for the better.

All this will cost money, mainly to pay for those insurance subsidies, and some people will tell you that the nation can't afford major health care reform given the costs of the economic recovery program. Let's talk about why you should ignore the naysayers.

First, let's put the costs of the economic-recovery program in perspective. It's possible that reviving the economy might cost as much as a trillion dollars over the course of your first term. But the Bush administration wasted at least twice that much on an unnecessary war and tax cuts for the wealthiest; the recovery plan will be intense but temporary, and won't place all that much burden on future budgets. Put it this way: With long-term federal debt paying the lowest interest rates in half a century, the interest costs on a trillion dollars in new debt will amount to only $30 billion a year, about 1.2 percent of the current federal budget.

Second, there's good reason to believe that health care reform will save money in the long run. Our system isn't just full of holes in coverage, it's also grossly inefficient, with huge bureaucratic costs — such as the immense resources that insurance companies devote to making sure they don't cover the people who need health care the most. And under a universal system it will be much easier to use our health care dollars wisely, to spend money only on medical procedures that work and not on those that don't. Since rising health care costs are the main source of the grim, long-run projections for the federal budget, the truth is that we can't afford not to move forward on health care reform.

And let's not ignore the long-term political effects. Back in 1993, when the Clintons tried and failed to create a universal health care system, Republican strategists like William Kristol (now my colleague at The New York Times) urged their party to oppose any reform on political grounds; they argued that a successful health care program, by conveying the message that government can actually serve the public interest, would fundamentally shift American politics in a progressive direction. They were right — and the same considerations that made conservatives so opposed to health care reform should make you determined to make it happen.

Universal health care, then, should be your biggest priority after rescuing the economy. Providing coverage for all Americans can be for your administration what Social Security was for the New Deal. But the New Deal achieved something else: It made America a middle-class society. Under FDR, America went through what labor historians call the Great Compression, a dramatic rise in wages for ordinary workers that greatly reduced income inequality. Before the Great Compression, America was a society of rich and poor; afterward it was a society in which most people, rightly, considered themselves middle class. It may be hard to match that achievement today, but you can, at least, move the country in the right direction.

What caused the Great Compression? That's a complicated story, but one important factor was the rise of organized labor: Union membership tripled between 1935 and 1945. Unions not only negotiated better wages for their own members, they also enhanced the bargaining power of workers throughout the economy. At the time, conservatives warned that wage gains would have disastrous economic effects — that the rise of unions would cripple employment and economic growth. But in fact, the Great Compression was followed by the great postwar boom, which doubled American living standards over the course of a generation.

Unfortunately, the Great Compression was reversed starting in the 1970s, as American workers once again lost much of their bargaining power. This loss was partly due to changes in the world economy, as major U.S. manufacturing corporations started facing more international competition. But it also had a lot to do with politics, as first the Reagan administration, then the Bush administration, did all they could to undermine the ability of workers to organize.

You can make a start on reversing that process. Clearly, you won't be able to oversee a tripling of union membership anytime soon. But you can do a lot to enhance workers' rights. One is to start laying the groundwork to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it much harder for employers to intimidate workers who want to join a union. I know it probably won't happen in your first year, but if and when it does, the legislation will enable America to take a huge step toward recapturing the middle-class society we've lost.

Truth & Reconciliation

There are many other issues you'll need to deal with, of course. In particular, I haven't said a word about environmental policy, which is ultimately the most important issue of all. That's because I suspect that it won't be possible to pass a comprehensive plan for dealing with climate change in your first year. By all means, put as much environmentally friendly investment as possible — such as spending to enhance energy efficiency — into the initial recovery plan. But I'm guessing that 2009 won't be the year to introduce cap-and-trade measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If I'm wrong, that's great — but I'm not counting on big environmental policy moves right away.

I also haven't said anything about foreign policy. Your team is well aware of the need to wind down the war in Iraq — which is, by the way, costing about as much each year as the insurance subsidies we need to implement universal health care. You're also aware of the need to find the least bad solution for the mess in Afghanistan. And I don't even want to think about Pakistan — but you have to. Good luck.

There is, however, one area where I feel the need to break discipline. I'm an economist, but I'm also an American citizen — and like many citizens, I spent the past eight years watching in horror as the Bush administration betrayed the nation's ideals. And I don't believe we can put those terrible years behind us unless we have a full accounting of what really happened. I know that most of the inside-the-Beltway crowd is urging you to let bygones be bygones, just as they urged Bill Clinton to let the truth about scandals from the Reagan-Bush years, in particular the Iran-Contra affair, remain hidden. But we know how that turned out: The same people who abused power in the name of national security 20 years ago returned as part of the team that, under the second George Bush, did it all over again, on a much larger scale. It was an object lesson in the truth of George Santayana's dictum: Those who refuse to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

That's why this time we need a full accounting. Not a witch hunt, maybe not even prosecutions, but something like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that helped South Africa come to terms with what happened under apartheid. We need to know how America ended up fighting a war to eliminate nonexistent weapons, how torture became a routine instrument of U.S. policy, how the Justice Department became an instrument of political persecution, how brazen corruption flourished not only in Iraq, but throughout Congress and the administration. We know that these evils were not, whatever the apologists say, the result of honest error or a few bad apples: The White House created a climate in which abuse became commonplace, and in many cases probably took the lead in instigating these abuses. But it's not enough to leave this reality in the realm of things "everybody knows" — because soon enough they'll be denied or forgotten, and the cycle of abuse will begin again. The whole sordid tale needs to be brought out into the sunlight.

It's probably best if Congress takes the lead in investigations of the Bush years, but your administration can do its part, both by not using its influence to discourage the investigations and by bringing an end to the Bush administration's stonewalling. Let Congress have access to records and witnesses, and let the truth be told.

That said, the future is what matters most. This month we celebrate your arrival in the White House; at a time of great national crisis, you bring the hope of a better future. It's now up to you to deliver on that hope. By enacting a recovery plan even bolder and more comprehensive than the New Deal, you can not only turn the economy around — you can put America on a path toward greater equality for generations to come.

Respectfully,

Paul Krugman

[From Issue 1070 — January 22, 2009]
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