The Future of Manufacturing, GM, and American Workers (Part III)
As president of General Motors when Eisenhower tapped him to become secretary of defense in 1953, “Engine Charlie” Wilson voiced at his Senate confirmation hearing what was then the conventional view. When asked whether he could make a decision in the interest of the US that was adverse to the interest of GM, he said he could.
Then he reassured them that such a conflict would never arise. “I cannot conceive of one because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country.”
Wilson was only slightly exaggerating. At the time, the fate of GM was inextricably linked to that of the nation. In 1953, GM was the world’s biggest manufacturer, the symbol of US economic might. It generated 3 per cent of US gross national product. GM’s expansion in the 1950s was credited with stalling a business slump. It was also America’s largest employer, with over 460,000 employees. Its blue-collar workers received (in today's dollars) $60 an hour that year in wages and benefits.
Today, Wal-Mart is America’s largest employer, the majority of whose employees receive just over $10 an hour. And General Motors is filing for bankruptcy. Wilson’s reassuring words in 1953 now have an ironic twist. There will be little difference between what is good for America and for GM because it is soon to be owned by US taxpayers who have forked out more than $60 billion to buy it.
But why would US taxpayers want to own today’s GM? Surely not because the shares promise a high return when the economy turns up. GM has been on a downward slide for years. In the 1960s, consumer advocate Ralph Nader revealed its cars were unsafe. In the 1970s, Middle East oil producers showed its cars were uneconomic. In the 1980s, Japanese auto makers exposed them as unreliable and costly. Many younger Americans have never bought a GM car and would not think of doing so. Given this record, it seems doubtful that taxpayers will even be repaid our $60 billion. But getting repaid cannot be the main goal of the bail-out. Presumably, the reason is to serve some larger public purpose. But the goal is not obvious.
It cannot be to preserve GM jobs, because the US Treasury has signaled GM must slim to get the cash. The company has only slightly more than 60,000 Americans today (83,000 around the world), and plans to shut half-a-dozen factories and sack at least 20,000 more U.S. workers this year. It has already culled its dealership network. Plans call for laying off another 18,000 U.S. workers by the end of 2010.
The purpose cannot be to create a new, lean, debt-free company that might one day turn a profit. That is what the private sector is supposed to achieve on its own and what a reorganization under bankruptcy would do.
Nor is the purpose of the bail-out to create a new generation of fuel-efficient cars. Congress has already given auto makers money to do this. Besides, the Treasury has said it has no interest in being an active investor or telling the industry what cars to make.
The only practical purpose I can imagine for the bail-out is to slow the decline of GM to create enough time for its workers, suppliers, dealers and communities to adjust to its eventual demise. Yet if this is the goal, surely there are better ways to allocate $60 billion than to buy GM? The funds would be better spent helping the Midwest diversify away from cars, as the auto industry continues to shrink. And eventually, for the reasons stated in Parts I and II of this series, diversify away from manufacturing assembly. Cash could be used to retrain car workers, giving them extended unemployment insurance as they retrain.
But US politicians dare not talk openly about industrial adjustment because the public does not want to hear about it. A strong constituency wants to preserve jobs and communities as they are, regardless of the public cost. Another equally powerful group wants to let markets work their will, regardless of the short-term social costs. Polls show most Americans are against bailing out GM, but if their own jobs were at stake I am sure they would have a different view.
So the Obama administration is, in effect, paying $60 billion to buy off both constituencies. It is telling the first group that jobs and communities dependent on GM will be better preserved because of the bail-out, and the second that taxpayers and creditors will be rewarded by it. But it is not telling anyone the complete truth: GM will disappear, eventually. The bail-out is designed to give the economy time to reduce the social costs of the blow.
Behind all of this is a growing public fear, of which GM’s demise is a small but telling part. Half a century ago, the prosperity of America’s middle class was one of democratic capitalism’s greatest triumphs. By the time Wilson left GM, almost half of all US families fell within the middle range of income. Most were headed not by professionals or executives but by skilled and semi-skilled factory workers. Jobs were steady and health benefits secure. Americans were becoming more equal economically.
But starting three decades ago, these trends have been turned upside down. Middle-class jobs that do not need a college degree are disappearing. Job security is all but gone. And the nation is more unequal. GM in its heyday was the model of economic security and widening prosperity. Its decline has mirrored the disappearance of both.
Middle-class taxpayers worry they cannot afford to bail out companies like GM. Yet they worry they cannot afford to lose their jobs. Wilson’s edict, too, has been turned upside down: in many ways, what has been bad for GM has been bad for much of America. The answer is not to bail out GM. It is to smooth the way to a new, post-manufacturing economy.
"But US politicians dare not talk openly about industrial adjustment because the public does not want to hear about it."
I don't think this is accurate Professor.
I think US politicians don't talk openly about industrial adjustment because they don't want to deal with the issue. I see no indication of any kind that the public doesn't want to hear about it. The public is unaware of it. Why? Because our pusillanimous leaders are too cowardly to honestly address this issue just as they are too cowardly to honestly address the fact that we cannot afford to fight two imperialist wars halfway across the globe for no apparent reason that has anything to do with protecting the interests of the United States and simultaneously be spending many times more on "defense" (over and above the two wars )than anyone could possibly justify. There really is a long list of issues long unaddressed by our political leaders that are often blamed on the public but that are really the fault of our politicians. Among those issues are climate change where we continue to debate the potential desirability of policies that should have been implemented 15 years ago, the obscene healthcare heist in this country that perpetuates the profits of insurance companies at the expense of every other sector of our society and all our people, the obscene lack of investment in mass transportation in our urban areas and the refusal to redirect substantial funds dedicated to highways that would be much better spent on light rail nationwide, etc...
Since the collapse of the economy last fall, the one thing that has become increasingly clear in this country is that the political, economic, and civic leadership of this nation is completely bankrupt and unworthy of the power they have been entrusted with.
June 1, 2009 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just more blame the workers swill.
June 1, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
The "new, post-manufacturing economy" in which we all take in each others laundry.
June 1, 2009 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I want to apply your eye makeup, Ellen, in exchange for other entertaining forms of bartering. In this "post industrial" economy, we need to be creative and enjoy psychic income in lieu of actual money.
June 1, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Samadhi via ironing shirts?
June 1, 2009 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not entirely sure, but if you want them there eyes, with oe without the cosmetics, you will have to ask Hildegard Knef the usual question, starting with "Jeepers, Creepers...."
June 2, 2009 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. It's absurd to think that people can have more than a subsistence living if their entire nation doesn't manufacture something.
I have worked in several small/micro companies that manufactured limited quantities of specialized gear--scientific instruments. Slim profit margins exist for many niches, and by making changes to the business models, some goods that are typically mass produced can be made in small batches, too.
The machinery and equipment to produce a lot of what consumers import is inexpensive and available.
There are fringe movements for doing all sorts of things on the cheap beyond manufacturing, as well.
Make Magazine, Home Power Magazine, and other hobbyist/arts publications are pushing these things out to a nascent garage-manufacturing crowd.
June 2, 2009 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reich, you're Wrong.
June 1, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
The only reason why GM is being bailed out is to make sure the share holders and the unsecured bond holders get their money. As usual, the only people taking the hit are the workers and the taxpayers.
June 1, 2009 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
So much of your argument appears intended to prop up globalization, a junk bill of goods sold to us as the Next Big Thing. It is impossible, looking at this counterintuitive scheme from the business-end of our current meltdown, to see globalization as anything other than a deliberate process to destroy the blue-collar working class, and turn this country into a backward, third-world sinkhole, filled with drawers of water and hewers of wood. Sending factories and capitalization overseas enriched a few at the cost of restructuring our socio-economic landscape to one mimicking a 10th-century barony - a tiny elite lording over toiling masses happy to gobble any crumb flung at them. Please, Mr. Reich: You're out of touch, like so many coddled academics sitting on chubby asses in comfortable offices while your wonderfully subversive ideas tear the rest of us to ribbons. Please, just shut up.
June 1, 2009 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Curt, you're being completely irrational here.
Sinkholes cannot be filled by drawers of water.
(Good one on the "chubby asses" though.)
June 1, 2009 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The part that especially bugs me about some comments on this thread (i.e., the public is unaware, the public doesn't want to deal with it) is the implicit message of the "American middle class as dumb clueless chumps."
Nah, you can't convince me of that, suggesting so, it's just hyper-rhetoric in service of whatever agitprop or economic ideology the writer wants to push. Take Colebrook, NH, for one example I was just reading about. They get it, they get globalization, they get many of the problems, they get the pickle they are in, and still they simply refuse to apply standard agitprop answers to individual cases:
....Colebrook made some noise. Thousands of people signed petitions, while hundreds more, including Mr. Bald, sent letters to every official they could think of, from Washington to Paris.
The letters, typewritten and handwritten, all but demanded reconsideration. Many complained that a lot of businesses in the north country might be considered “marginal” by State Department standards; that a paper mill in Groveton closed not too long ago; that a small restaurant beside Le Rendez-Vous shut down this past winter. That everything is relative.
“Colebrook and this region of New Hampshire don’t fit neatly into the bureaucratic formulas created by officials apparently removed from real life circumstances,” Jayne Lytle, of North Stratford, wrote to Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Le Rendez-Vous, Ms. Lytle wrote, is a tourist draw, a good neighbor — “an integral part of the economy.”...
June 1, 2009 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I understand what you're saying but I think you identify an exception to discredit others whose points of view are not inaccurate. I said and firmly believe that most Americans are oblivious to the issue of "industrial adustment". I am referring in the overall. I didn't say the citizens of Colebrook, NH where, if what you say is true and I believe you, there is an awakened citzenry at least to some extent. But that doesn't change the fact that in the more general national population, very few people are aware of or are thinking about industrial adjustment as a policy. They are vaguely aware that manufacturing jobs are disappearing and they probably wish that wasn't happening, but they don't have a good grasp on the big picture in which that is taking place, and our political leaders' refusal to deal with the issue is, in my opinion, a big reason why that is so. I believe it is false and misleading to say that the public doesn't want to deal with it as a means of giving an out to a bunch of cowards who are masquerading as our political leaders.
June 1, 2009 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
And we can't simply export our manufacturing and it's enviournmental and social consequences, to third world countries, and call it a "post-manufacturing" economy. What will we do with all the posts?
June 2, 2009 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
When written, the foregoing appears to be very clear and modern. Yet, who is to make things for consumers? Do these include industrial as well as individual consumers? At what price should they be made? Should they be made in places without workers' rights and environmental protections? Should those costs be shared by the non-consuming public, as air, land and water pollution currently are when products are made in low-regulation areas?
Yes, Peter Drucker and many like him have said that making things should be done by "others" and that Americans should reserve their support to globalized "knowledge" industries. But, isn't making unique things which positively affect our lives a knowledge industry?
Not being able to make things may give up design and innovation as well as the rewards which come to those who do so. It is a mistake, Professor Reich, not a policy which will gain good for the commonwealth.
June 1, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
So much of this seems based on the idea that Americans don't like to make things, or aren't very good at it, even if they do. The America of Reich's vision..an America populated by "suits"...what a boring country that would be.
A few years ago I had a student whose parents must have thought a lot like Dr. Reich. Their son wanted to be a skilled craftsman--a cabinet maker. They wanted him in college first, and in a suit thereafter. Being a good lad, he tried to do as his parents wished. The only way he was able to save himself was to develop a bleeding ulcer...a pretty tough way to demonstrate that college wasn't the ideal life for him.
So to all those who like making cars, or other stuff. I tip my hat to you. Whether Dr. Reich knows it or not, we need folks like you.
June 1, 2009 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
(Standing Ovation)
That's for the shot of reality.
June 1, 2009 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
There should be, in the best scenario, increasing numbers of jobs in the U.S. for high-end manufacturing, as goods become more complex. Lasers, machine-tools, medical goods manufacturing equipment, analytical equipment, and the like. And such production jobs should be bouyed up by the research and development, in universities and business, that is necessary to the design of such equipment. In such a scenario there will be plenty of room for bean counters to keep the books balanced, and more skilled analysts who predict where the businesses and universities should be going.
Our present problem is that a vast majority of the rewards for analytical work have gone to the Ponzi scheme we call the financial services industry.
June 1, 2009 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
After reading all three of your posts, I agree with you on substance: in theory, we should be able to transform manufacturing jobs into the “symbolic analyst” jobs needed for the future. But I think your theory runs aground on reality on a number of fronts. Just off the top of my head:
1. You assume that the capability to learn a manufacturing job can be transferred to the capability to conduct symbolic work through some type of training. Not to take away from the skill required to build something with your hands, I’m not sure this is a valid assumption.
2. You assume that the replacement of workers with robots will stop with manufacturing. As robots become more ‘intelligent’, this replacement will simply work its way up the food chain in the name of efficiency. Where do you go when all the analytic jobs are gone?
Finally, instead of tacking on two more years of education and expecting that an already diminishing population of high school graduates will go on to complete it, why not revamp our educational system to produce analytical workers straight out of high school? We can still preserve college for those who want to go, but at least our high school grads will be prepared for what their parents were prepared for when they graduated – go out and immediately become productive workers, just analytic, instead of manufacturing.
Over all, I found your posts enlightening, as usual, specifically with respect to the loss of manufacturing jobs on a global scale. We often think that our jobs are going to Chinese workers, not robots.
June 1, 2009 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
People in developing nations who don't require so much money to pay the bills every month--those people can build "things" cheaper than we can in America. We should not compete with them. Our golden age of manufacturing was 1900-1970. Theirs is still ahead.
The developing nations--India, Brazil, Indonesia, even China-- are now entering their heyday. We can't any more stop their progress than Donald Duck could have stopped the union of the railroads at Promontory Point in 1869. 150 years ago we were fueling our expansion on Manifest Destiny. Now our destiny is one of intelligent leadership, instead of bull-in-a-china-shop wild west carelessness. We've got to change with the times 'cause the times they are a-changin'.
Not only do the new kids on the block have low wages, and therefore low production costs and hence competitive product prices--they have the advantage of building their seething infrastructures on the new technologies. They've got the favorable destiny of low-cost, efficient industry, no matter how you cut it.
So get used to it America. Let's find something else to do. Dr Reich's message is the handwriting on the wall. He is correct when he writes: "GM will disappear, eventually. The bail-out is designed to give the economy time to reduce the social costs of the blow." Even if there is a company named GM ten years from now, it will not be building "your father's Oldsmobile."
Maybe if they'd done a little better job on the Corvair, all this might now have turned out differently.
Workers who are discontent with this presently unfolding scenario should organize--not organize to squeeze blood out the dried-up GM turnip or the twice-zombified Chrysler gas-guzzlin' dinosaur-- but organize new companies to build cars that Americans can afford to buy and to drive in the future.
Or trains. Remember them? Or bicycles and motorcycles. They're more fun than cars. And don't overlook victory gardens. We can save some bucks right there. There's nothing wrong with agriculture. Our great grandparents did it before they made the big move to town.
If some of you laid off line-workers could get together, do some tinkerin', turn a few bolts and screws, maybe figure out how to build a better mousetrap, er, excuse me, solar energy collector, for producing cheap, contributing-wattage-to-the-grid electrical power for every household, you just might just initiate America's next growth industry. Everybody would want one. Folks might even take out a loan to buy one.
This is back-to-basics time for America. Let's show the world what true capitalism is. It's not what happens on Wall Street, not what goes on at the Fed or the US Treasury. The recovery will come on Main Street. The real green means grass-roots.. It's time to quit looking for entitlements and get to work innovating and renovating in what remains of post-derivative America.
Carey Rowland, author of Glass half-Full
June 1, 2009 7:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reich seems to believe in the the "let them eat cake" economy.
And he says:
"But starting three decades ago, these trends have been turned upside down. Middle-class jobs that do not need a college degree are disappearing. Job security is all but gone. And the nation is more unequal."
Was that all just magical or what? Isn't it about time was starting asking who surrendered the middle-class? Who lost the American Dream?
I keep asking what the heck do these pols think they're elected to do? Who do they think they're elected to defend?
June 1, 2009 7:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another thing Reich should not get away with is limiting this to manufacturing jobs. It's not about manufacturing jobs. It's about middle-class jobs. Blue collar workers are just the canaries in the proverbial mine.
June 1, 2009 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely. I have spent the last 30 years of my life in IT for the insurance industry, the last 12 as a consultant. Trust me it is not just manufacturing that is going off shore. Most of my career has been rewarding both financially and intellectually. Though, by 1999/2000 you could see what was beginning to happen. I remember discussions I had with my fellow professionals at the time concerning this development and coming to the conclusion that this would not be a problem for us as our experience and knowledge would carry us through. Although I remember thinking at the time one would be better off not getting into IT as a career choice.
Boy was I wrong. Within 2 years everything had changed. When you could find work the rates had significantly decreased (approx. 30% - 40%). Since travel expenses have to be factored in as well as health insurance what was a good living became marginal. Over time I have gotten up to my eyeballs in debt. Since I am in my mid 50's retraining is out, so I am pretty much stuck with what I've got. To build up an expertise in computer software systems takes years not weeks. Nobody is going to spend that kind of money training somebody in my age group to learn a new language or business or whatever. I certainly wouldn't myself. It just doesn't make good business sense.
This is what I have been dealing with the last 7 years. Unfortunately we will see more of this as time goes on. And it will spread out to any job that requires interaction via a computer. We are being forced to compete with people (in my case India) whose wages are 10 - 15% of what we make here. Unless your are all for making the U.S. a third world country this trend is unsustainable.
Unfortunately Dr. Reich, these new jobs you are talking about will not be created here, they will go to the countries with the lowest wages.
Unless we drastically reform our global policies in regards to work and trade we will end up like Rome - nothing but bread and circuses to keep the population satiated.
June 2, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't completely agree. I just brought in 2 (middle-aged)contract developers who did not know the language (Java) that I wanted them to use. They also didn't know the other technologies. But my perspective is that a language, or a software technology, is not nearly as hard to learn as is good development skills.
These guys know how to develop and how to interact with customers and requirements. And they're producing quality work after minimal extra start-up time.
One of the things that American culture produces are innovators. It's built into our social fabric. We turn "crazy ideas" into products that people are crazy about. What we've been bad at, recently, is capitalizing that innovation.
Americans invented CD's, DVD's, hybrid engines, integrated circuits, microprocessors.
June 2, 2009 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are right that computer languages are rather easy to learn. A lot depends on what kind of system one is working on in terms of time needed to get to know how the system functions though. For example, the system I have expertise in is written pretty much in COBOL (I know, a language used in the time of dinosaurs)and contains over 4 thousand programs. Even with ten years of prior experience with other systems it still took around 5 years to get enough experience with it to really understand how the beast works. I'm sure there are even larger and more complex systems out there as well as many that are not. In addition, from my point of view anyway, one needs to gain an understanding of the business one is working in to be an effective analyst and that takes time.
June 2, 2009 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have been saying for thirty years (at least) that the United States is self-destructing on the automobile. GM is going belly-up, and we are going to reincarnate it so that it can keep producing big fat gas-hogs.
China and the U.S. have both enacted stimulus packages. China is building high speed rail with their stimulus money; we are widening roads and bailing out the (failed) auto companies. Widening roads in a country that has used up most of its oil?!
Another financial crisis is coming down the pike. Eventually the country will wake up to the fact that its current transportation policy of planes and automobiles is a disaster. Even the recent improved "CAFE" standards are a joke. Not to mention the "carbon cap and trade" program, when the government has given away the carbon permits.
Here is what we need to do: Quit subsidizing oil and eliminate the oil depletion allowance; begin raising taxes on energy, including gasoline and electricity, steadily, to encourage people to conserve and run their lives more efficiently. Roll the tax revenues over into things which reduce our consumption of carbon fuels. e.g. develop wind and solar power; rebuild our railroads and mass transit in the cities; insulate our homes better, etc. etc.
We have been subsidizing carbon fuels for a hundred years; the result is that our supplies are dwindling, and people are squandering oil, coal, and gas as if they were infinite.
Wake up, America. The pigeons are coming home to roost.
June 1, 2009 9:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was hoping to find a reference to the very thoughtful proposal by Michael Moore that these GM plants be turned into producers of the forms of transportation we DO need: bullet trains, buses, fuel-efficient cars, electric batteries.
Moore pointed out the quick transformation that was achieved when the US entered WWII, and GM production lines went from producing autos to churning out planes, tanks, etc.
I'd like to hear Professor Krugman's thoughts on this possibility.
June 2, 2009 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Alexander Hamilton, brilliant guy, had the right idea.
Tariffs.
But we should not be putting tariffs on goods produced in foreign countries. We should put a tariff on the equivalent value of the labor used to produce those products. After all, our labor is suffering a disadvantage due to our infrastructure costs: labor laws, environmental laws, health care costs, etc. The Chinese, Indian, etc. economies don't have those higher infrastructure costs so their labor is of course cheaper.
If you really want globalization where everyone is on a level playing field, then level the playing field.
June 2, 2009 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's a link to Michael Moore's article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/goodbye-gm_b_209603.html
June 2, 2009 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Although I have often noted my view of Robert Reich's columns as excellent, this one falls short of the usual high notes. The reasoning about GM is facile (ruling out reasons for bailing out GM in a very perfunctory way, unworthy of the issue's full import and complexity) and the conclusion is misleading.
There's at least one flat out major misstatement of fact:
In actuality, as documented in many places including the Daniel Bell's much ballyhooed book on The Coming of Post-Industrial Society , most jobs in the US were ALREADY in the broad white-collar "sector" as of 50 years ago. Although many households were headed by skilled and semi-skilled factory workers, there were already many more white collar jobs, though most were not and are not professionals or executives.
This is key as we are already in a post-manufacturing economy. There is a need both for new kinds of manufacturing (eg producing wind-turbines and the components of solar energy), and for new PROCESSES of manufacturing the same or similar items as now(to be more ecologically friendly). Eco-industrialization is a key to a positive future for the US and for humanity as a whole, along with the advancement of white collar work to emphasize new kinds of jobs, including the expansion of the 'knowledge' sector.
I personally strongly feel that for MANY reasons, GM and the major auto producers should be kept going, even if some production is shifted (as happened during WWII) to things like wind turbines etc. The notion that the need for more fuel efficient cars has already been dealt with by Congress is suprisingly simplistic -- as there are many forces that need to be brought to bear to accomplish the same goals. There surely will be HUGE differences in the leadership of GM as at Chrysler, even if the feds don't
'micromanage' production.
And as for jobs, even a slimmed-down GM, and the parts etc that it buys saves many more jobs than a completely disappeared GM.
I have to admit that the totality of what I'd like to see done with a bailed-out auto sector (as with a bailed out huge segment of the financial sector) isn't likely in the short run, but some is likely and the possibility remains of more
there's a whole lot more to say by way of critique, including much by those more knowledgeable than I, but I'll leave my comments at that
June 2, 2009 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reich has, and will always, be a "respectable" liberal voice of "good" capatalism. Consistently extolling its virtues with little real world understanding of its consequences. As Clinton's labor secretary, Reich was a neoliberal light weight who pushed the absurdities of the "new economy." And as that "new economy" characterized by financialization has crashed, he is now telling us that a "post-manufacturing economy," controlled by information automatons or some such twaddle will be our salvation.
Quite the contrary, a college degree is increasingly less useful, with attendant drops in wages. and many of the succesful EU economies provide a nice counterweight to this thesis.
Reich's post, much like his tenure as Labor Secretary, is shallow and not to be trusted.
However, I have to awake tomorrow morning to, oddly enough, work for a labor organization - a place Reich will never belong or understand. The hallowed out despair of large swaths of America will always remain a far cry from Berkley.
I believe Krugman's lament about Reich is all too true: "Policy Entrepreneur," 'tis he.
June 3, 2009 1:29 AM | Reply | Permalink