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The Unwisdom of Elites
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times


New York Times, May 9, 2011
Posted: May 17th, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/opinion/09krugman.html

The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europes single currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong? The fact is that what were experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess ... were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes. What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000? First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1 trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs. So who was responsible for these budget busters? It wasnt the man in the street. We need to place the blame where it belongs, to chasten our policy elites. Otherwise, theyll do even more damage in the years ahead.

Note: For highly revealing major articles exposing secret gatherings of the global elite and their activities, click here.


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