Can't they ever get it correct?

The British budget unveiled by the Tory-Liberal coalition calls for cuttinig 25% of nearly all expenditures in the UK together with tax increases to close the deficit. The reports on the budget in the New York Times contrasts the deficit reduction in the UK with the course that Prsident Obama wants in the US, namely: more spending. The Guardian, a Labor paper in the UK puts it this way: "The Cameron-Osborne plan puts Britain on a fiscal trajectory diametrically the opposite of the one Obama prefers for the US. Obama wants more stimulus spending (whether he'll get it or not is another question). Traditional economics supports the Obama view. The Times story notes that 'the sharp reductions defy conventional economic wisdom, which holds that governments should increase spending to stimulate growth when the private sector is weak.'"

Why can't these papers get it right? Taditional economics does not support the Obama view. Under a normal Keynesian analysis (which the papers are now calling traditional economics), the way to get out of a recession would be spending by the government on things that promote growth. For example, building a new port or a bridge would be encouraged. On the other hand, expenditures that do not promote growth are not part of the Keynesian analysis. Thus, spending nearly $200 billion to support public sector jobs does not promote growth and will not lead to any push out of a recession. The Obama stimulus bill and the new one he is currently pushing have very little in the way of spending that meets the test of a true Keynesian analysis. Payoffs to Democrat special interests are not going to get the country out of recession. Indeed, the resulting debt will actually prolong the recession and slow any recovery.

It really bothers me when we get this half assed analysis from people who should know better. I am sure that the New York Times can understand the difference between the two types of expenditures. It is ridiculous that the Times feels that it has to print nonsense of this sort as "economic analysis" just so that it can support Obama in his schemes.