— By Kevin Drum| Sun Mar. 20, 2011 9:54 PM PDT
One of the most impressive accomplishments of the modern right is its ability to generate plausible technical papers to justify conservative tropes that are basically ridiculous. For example, during last year's campaign it was popular to claim that our economy was weak because of regulatory uncertainty. This made no real sense at all. Our economy is weak because of economic uncertainty: businesses don't have enough customers to make it worth investing in new capacity or hiring new workers, and they aren't sure when or if new customers will appear in the future. Unfortunately, that didn't make for very good campaign trail bashing. Republicans wanted to convince people that the economy was weak because President Obama and congressional Democrats kept passing onerous new regulations that had businesses scared to death, so that's the story they kept repeating ad nauseum.
It never really caught on outside of campaign stump speeches, though, because — well, because it was ridiculous. What to do? Answer: find someone to write a technical paper demonstrating that regulatory uncertainty really is holding back the economy. But who could they get for this job?
Paul Krugman provides the answer: none other than Alan Greenspan.
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http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/03/defending-ridiculous