Lame Duck Economy

Watching an Incompetent Administration that created the current economic disaster continue to ignore it or at best, take misguided actions that fail at solution, Paul Krugman's comments are salient.

Yet economic policy, rather than responding to the threat, seems to have gone on vacation. In particular, panic has returned to the credit markets, yet no new rescue plan is in sight. On the contrary, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, has announced that he won't even go back to Congress for the second half of the $700 billion already approved for financial bailouts. And financial aid for the beleaguered auto industry is being stalled by a political standoff.

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Now, maybe letting the auto companies die is the right decision, even though an auto industry collapse would be a huge blow to an already slumping economy. But it's a decision that should be taken carefully, with full consideration of the costs and benefits - not a decision taken by default, because of a political standoff between Democrats who want Paulson to use some of that $700 billion and a lame-duck administration that's trying to force Congress to divert funds from a fuel-efficiency program instead.