Yes, we do have a winner, as we always do. Bob takes home this week’s trophy for obsequiousness to the Pentagon above and beyond the call of duty, and in the face of all economic sense (his area of expertise, supposedly). After attacking fellow Postman Bob Woodward (for suggesting that the Pentagon could save $25…
Search Results for: ROBERT SAMUELSON
Bad History Week at Robert Samuelson’s
There was a time—in the early days of the Clinton Administration, perhaps—when Robert Samuelson’s column on economics was worth reading, on a consistent basis. But the times, well, they changed a long time ago. Recently, Bob took note of the fact that, economically, things are pretty shitty these days, and the only people with a…
Robert J. Samuelson is even-handed. Which is not the same thing as being honest.
WashPost economics pundit and pseudo know it all Robert Samuelson, whom I often ridicule but sometimes praise, is up to his oldest and most tedious trick, “even-handedness”, commenting on what he calls the “schoolyard brawl” between President Trump and Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve Board. Samuelson sums up recent developments thusly: After the…
Robert Samuelson, idiot
I have been in the past quite complimentary of Wash Post columnist Robert Samuelson. Well, I can’t take it all back because Bob often gets it right. But in this wretched post, “Defunding defense,” Bob gets it grossly and gratuitously wrong. It’s the “gratuitously” part that I can’t forgive, although the “grossly” part is, in…
Robert Samuelson: Yes, I am an idiot. Why do you ask?
Robert Samuelson, several eons ago a competent reporter, ends a column on a housing market still constrained by tight credit in the following manner: Public policy faces a contradiction. There’s a powerful impulse to blame banks for the financial crisis and to “make them pay.” Just recently, the Obama administration sued Bank of America, charging…
Bob Samuelson, making me feel sorry for President Obama
Yeah, I didn’t think it was possible, not after the president’s too Obama to live statements on the Orlando Massacre, repeating vague calls for gun control measures that would not have prevented the killings and refusing to acknowledge murderer Omar Mateen’s shout out to ISIS. I mean, what’s in a name, anyway? Yeah, I’d had…
The ruin that is Trump: When F*ck You isn’t enough
Well, it isn’t. “F*ck You” hasn’t made the North Koreans play ball. Or the Iranians. Or the Chinese. Or even the Venezuelans. Telling the world what to do has proved a lot harder than Donald Trump imagined, and, frankly, the big guy is getting both frustrated and bored, and even a little worried. It’s “interesting”…
One for Bob
I lambasted, pretty much, Robert Samuelson last week for a dumb-ass column he wrote claiming that we don’t spend enough on defense. Well, this week, Bob gets it right, in a column praising President Obama’s handling of the Great Recession, which was in fact his greatest achievement, though not quite great enough to allow Hillary…
Brexit, Part 2: What is to be done?
The impact of Brexit continues to roil and rumble. Paul Krugman say’s it’s not that big a deal—well, not unless you live in the UK itself, where “it looks all too likely that the vote will both empower the worst elements in British political life and lead to the breakup of the UK itself.” So,…
Scapegoats, Please
The Republican Party. Well, that was easy. I could blame poor Tim Geithner, whom I’m starting to feel sorry for. Tim was last seen furiously denouncing Standard & Poors for venturing the opinion that things don’t seem to be working too smoothly down in Washington. Felix Salmon posted a very nice column yesterday morning explaining…