Biden’s current mission is to make the world focus on his $1.9 trillion plan for a coronavirus comeback. New York Times Opinion column by Gail Collins.
Watching President Joseph Biden’s Town Hall, I started to tear up. I don’t remember the question or his particular answer, but Biden just seems like such a decent guy (although a decent guy with what seems like abnormally white teeth). I’ve never seen a Trump Town Hall but I’ve seen several of his rallies – on TV, not in person – and he is a stellar entertainer, bullshiting and bantering with a smile, interacting, playing. almost dancing, with the crowd; Biden is an old-fashioned politician and doesn’t do any of those things, but he does radiate a sincerity and compassion along with a technocrat’s grasp of detail that is very effective. For me, he is most effective when he starts to ramble on about a subject that he has obviously thought about and least effective when he sinks into what seems like an over-rehearsed answer.
One thing that really impressed me about Biden is that he can see the other guy’s point of view. When asked about China aggressively terrorizing the Uyghurs, annexing Hong Kong – which may be the wrong word, maybe suppressing is better – and threatening Taiwan, he said: “…if you know anything about Chinese history, it has always been the time when China has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home. So the central… Vastly overstated. The central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united tightly-controlled China.” He then went on to say “Well, there will be repercussions for China…China is trying very hard to become the world leader and…as long as they’re engaged in activity that is contrary to basic human rights, it’s going to be hard for them to do that. But it’s much more complicated. I shouldn’t try to talk China policy in 10 minutes on television.”
What most pleased me, however, is that President Biden seems to be a committed member of The Friends of MMT. To refresh your memory, MMT or Modern Monetary Theory, or Modern Money Theory says that a large National Debt is not a problem if it is not inflationary. They point out that Japan has been running a huge National Debt for years without inflation. They also point out that with all the increase in the money supply during the Obama Administration, conventical economics says that we should have rampant inflation by now, but we haven’t. We haven’t even had any inflation with the additional Debt brought on by Trump’s massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Actually, because we haven’t any inflation and a little inflation is considered good, to induce inflation, the Federal Reserve has even dropped the interest rate to a hyper-low 1/4 of a percent. (to quote myself from a post on MMT from about a year ago). In the Town Hall, President Biden said “This is the first time in my career, and as you can tell I’m over 30. The first time in my career that there is a consensus among economists left, right, and center and including the IMF and in Europe that the overwhelming consensus is, in order to grow the economy a year, two, three, and four down the line, we can’t spend too much. Now is the time we should be spending, now is the time to go big.”
With the economy on the skids because of Covid-19 and Global Climate Change roaring towards us, we are going to need to spend money, lots of money, to survive and it is nice to know that President Joseph Biden knows that.
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