The Warshington Post

Today Brad DeLong is excoriating WaPo for two things.  Rosaline Helderman's claim on A-1 that since Robert McDonnel has not put Virginia in a ditch, having Repubs in charge nationally would not do that either.

The second, David Broder is calling for Obama to bomb Iran to get our economy going again.

Brad provides a link for the first, but not the second, so I looked it up myself.  Broder doesn't put it quite so bluntly, but close:

"Here is where Obama is likely to prevail. With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran's ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/29/AR2010102905810.html

He also says, basically, the President can do nothing about the economy, except start a war, because, "the market will go where it is going to go."

I say we give up on "the market" to do anything much regarding meeting human needs and aspirations.  Markets may provide some useful choice in consumer goods and services, like chocolate.  But the fate of a nation or the whole world should not be left to them, that requires planning and collective action.  When Broder says "the market" what he really means is wealthy individuals, who dominate the markets because they own them.  Letting them make all the important decisions is not democracy.

Centrist Democrat DeLong is often too conservative for my taste, but he correctly labels Broder a "monster".

Just in case you thought WarPo was some kind of "liberal" newspaper.

By the way, over at the other warpaper, the NYTimes, Krugman (the best columnist in the mainstream media) is showing another take on what "the markets" exist for, mainly supplying cocaine and prostitutes to high flying traders:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/sex-and-drugs-and-markets-role/

Charles