Don't panic

ARTICLE: Let's Put Down the Pitchforks, By Steven Pearlstein, March 20, 2009; Page D01

I like Pearlstein a lot. He is always illuminating, never hyperbolic, and full of common sense.

This is a great piece about tempering our current populist anger, the key point being, the more we let our government indulge our popular rage, the more inconsistent and untrustworthy it's going to seem to the very private sector players it's trying to lure back on the playing field.

I could expand that same argument to the Obama administration and foreign economies: reversing Bush-era free-trade policies and suddenly calling into question long-negotiated free-trade agreements with old friends like South Korea will only make us look scared, desperate, and untrustworthy.

And that will backfire in our faces.

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

We are scared, desperate, and untrustworthy! Is it justified that is my question for you Tom B.?I think many realize for the first time in its entire history the real fate and standing for the citizens and residents of the United States is no longer within their control for the most part. By the end of this year that will be evident. I voted for OBAMA but the administration I believe is floundering and while Clinton wasted his entire first year as President, hope that is not OBAMA's model. Worldwide drought and food shortages are not the fault of the US but a great deal of the rest of the problem rests on the lack of reality based US leadership since 1980 (IMO)!

[Jeremy]

Well, in fairness, the KORUSFTA is probably about as dead here as it is back in the states...