As anyone who has followed the career of Maureen Dowd can tell you: there is, in fact, a Pulitzer for bad reporting.

I have to agree with Dean Baker. How is it that Adam Davidson manages to talk about the "paradox" of thrift without mentioning why or even THAT Americans (who can afford to do so) have good reason to save money?

Also, how is it that NPR prides itself on placing the news into context when a superficial description of our country's economic problem without mentioning the bubble(s) that fueled consumption as the driver for a GDP that is 2/3 consumption?

Speaking of a paradox, isn't it more than just a bit strange that GDP (Gross Domestic PRODUCT) is, in fact, CONSUMPTION! Yes, I understand the way GDP works, but are Americans just a bunch of monkey-brained animals who don't understand that consumption is the REAL problem; that we actually PRODUCE very little tangible stuff as part of our GDP?

Maybe NPR's Planet Monkey could provide a bit more context about how we got here and where we are going, short of the shopping that it seems we need to do before the upcoming Xmas season, if it really wants to inform its listeners.

In my opinion, NPR's economic reporting is describing the problem so poorly that its prescriptions will likely cause more short-term economic DAMAGE than it will long-term improvement.

Now, where is that banana?

Clearly because of their positions, AG & BB deserve to be characterized as two "wise monkeys". But, they were far from our only prominent Economists who fit the adage, who your choice for the third monkey? My favorite is Paul Krugman, simply because he spent five years (to bubble explosion) harping incessantly to all of us NY Times readers of the devastatingly harmful policies of the Bush Administration.
I've never understood how PK could've missed the biggest bubble in history (or why he chose to stay silent) and he's never explained.

Bailey, Krugman did mention the housing bubble in some of his writings. If you read his collection of 1998-2005 pieces (The Great Unraveling) you'll find a few mentions of it here and there -- IIRC, as early as like 2003. It's true that he wasn't shouting it from the rooftops by any means, but he didn't "miss" the housing bubble. He *did* shout it out loud every time he felt Greenspan was too lax with monetary policy (or not disinterested enough), so it's really kind of unfair to be singling him out for attack.

Also, re: this NPR piece, I thought it was bizarre how both commentators spoke of the crisis as though it were already a thing of the past. That's crazy talk. We are right in the thick of it.

A couple of days ago they had a five-minute interview with Peter Orzsag, and every question was along the lines of, "What can you possibly do to minimize the impact of this ballooning deficit?" Obsession with the deficit seems rampant everywhere these days, to the exclusion of any focus on underlying reasons for the deficit. I thought Orzsag made a good point: too many people who criticize the government for running up a budget deficit simultaneously criticize measures (health care reform, fiscal stimulus etc.) that are aimed at reducing it over the long term.

Zack,

Thanks for mentioning the Orzsag piece on NPR. I remember thinking the same thing when I heard it. Some things aren't worth going into debt over (health and life). Some are (death and war). It's it funny what elites will wring their hands over? I wonder how many people working at NPR have family members fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And, I wonder how many people working at NPR don't have health care? Silly me, I guess I worry about things that don't really matter...

Now, let's go shopping! Tee hee!

-madchen vapid

Regarding "Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke somehow couldn't see a housing bubble over the years 2002-2006 even as it grew to $8 trillion":

First, the HPI shows the bubble getting a head of steam thru the last 3 or 4 years of the 90's.

Second, as we critique AG & BB, perhaps we should be careful to also critique as blind at least the last 15 years of the MSM, Congress, and the Administration.

Third, let's not forget to critique ourselves. We all new house prices were appreciating way higher than normal, but didn't even look into it.

And now, we're repeating the manipulators leading the manipulatees pattern by allowing them to so neatly package healthcare "reform" into such a swallowable nugget.

Adam Davidson: isn't he the narcissistic pinhead who attacked Elizabeth Warren for mentioning the fact that consumers were hurting? He should have a closetful of those Pulitzers by now.

Yup, same Adumb Davidson.

Here is some more Planet Monkey nonsense from All Things Considered today.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120399265

Zach,
As a confirmed PK groupie for many years I'm not buying it.
"(PK) *did* shout it out loud every time he felt Greenspan was too lax with monetary policy (or not disinterested enough), so it's really kind of unfair to be singling him out for attack."
When wasn't AG too lax with monetary policy? Total repeal of Glass-Steagal w/o asking for one measure of new oversight, front-running for Boskin Commission's DRAMATIC reduction in the CPI measurement, .... It's outragious what he did over so many years. Yet PK was VERY selective in his challenges to AG, in my view unfairly selective considering his vocal attacks on GW Bush (Chauncey (Gardener to his friends) and the damage AG's deregulated money center banks leveraged 30-40 times did to our economy & future.
Dean Baker spoke to the Boskin Hearings, he spoke to the Glass-Steagall Issue, he wrote MUCH about the housing bubble back when much could have been done. Nice try but PK WAS silent.

Bailey & Zach,

The locus of Paul Krugman's entire enterprise is to be found in his partisan advocacy. One sees his prescience as an economist in the fact that he forecast all seven of the recessions that have occured in the last eight years.