The Password Is: Jobs

I never expected hope and change to feel so underwhelming:

President Barack Obama is finalizing a jobs package that could include a program to refurbish school buildings nationwide and tax breaks to encourage firms to hire workers.

The package, to be unveiled in early September, is Obama's chance to convince skeptical voters he can bring down the 9.1 percent unemployment rate and steer the United States away from another recession -- ahead of next year's election.

...The president is widely expected to repeat his calls for an extension of a payroll tax cut, push for patent reform and bilateral free trade deals, and suggest an infrastructure bank to upgrade the country's roads, airports and other facilities.

Retrofitting schools with energy efficient technology would allow the government to directly hire for labor-intensive work and also give a boost to the clean energy sector that Obama has said could be an important U.S. economic motor.

Other measures being considered, according to economists who have advised the White House, include tax credits for firms hiring more workers, funds for local governments to hire teachers, and retraining help for the long-term unemployed. Steps to boost the ailing housing market are also under review.

I mean, yeah. These are mostly not terrible ideas. But they're also not dynamic ideas, or big ideas, or bold ideas, or brave ideas. They have neither the capacity to inspire, nor to be particularly effective in reversing an economic crisis the profundity of which has not appeared to penetrate the bubble-wrapped heads of the Beltway elite.

These are center-right ideas suitable for the domestic policy of a milquetoast administration during a sluggish economy. They are not pieces of a grand vision necessary for the domestic policy of a proactive administration during a time of grave need.

For someone who billed himself as a visionary agent of change, President Obama is depressingly uncreative.

"What's going to be included in this plan are some reasonable ideas that could have a tangible impact on improving our economy and creating jobs ... the kinds of things that Republicans should be able to support," [White House spokesman Josh Earnest] said. "These are bipartisan ideas that the president is going to offer up."

Oh for Maude's sake.

Apparently, the president still hasn't noticed that the Republicans don't do reasonable. Maybe he should try something unreasonable by Beltway standards for a change. Like being a progressive.

Quote of the Day

"Now normally, investors accept the unknowability of bank equity because they have some faith in the system. Does anyone have any confidence in the system now? Financial regulators have shown themselves to be incompetent and/or badly captured by banks. Earth to base: letting off bank management easy is bad for investors in the long run. Being an investor in an overly risky bank looks swell until it suddenly isn't."—Yves Smith, in a must-read piece about the tanking of Bank of America's stock, which is, as Henry Blodget bluntly writes here, "stoking fears that Bank of America will go bust, taking the whole economy down with it."

Gee, it's almost like the government should have DONE SOMETHING after the last panicky bailout, instead of letting the banks go right back to doing what they were doing before, without regulation or consequence.

What is it they say about those who refuse to learn from history...?