Enter
value of the assets on their balance sheets, their false façade will
fall, and it will be revealed that
they are more structurally insolvent than they prefer to let on.
This idea of “marking to fantasy” is a useful metaphor to describe how “centrist” pundits are
warping what’s going on in the
federal budget debate in order to
hew to their fetishistic idea that
both sides are equally to blame for
the current impasse. This is not,
strictly speaking, true: We are at
an impasse because congressional
Republicans will not countenance
revenue, they will not compromise
and they greet any effort to bridge
the gap as an opportunity to extract additional demands. This
only helps to firm up the impasse.
In order to maintain this façade,
these pundits engage in a blend of
magical thinking (“Obama needs
to show leadership!”) and outright misinformation. The good
news here is that other members
of the media are helping to force a
reckoning, back in the direction of
“mark to market.” David Brooks’s
recent insistence that Obama
had not presented a plan to offset
sequestration opened the floodgates — numerous critics rightly
pointed out that Obama’s plan to
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
HUFFINGTON
03.10.13
offset sequestration was right on
the White House website. To his
credit, Brooks recanted his claim,
and as a result, it’s now harder to
support this false façade.
But more needs to be done to
get pundits out of their “mark to
fantasy” mindset, and the New
York Times’ Bill Keller’s recent
dollop of piffle is a fine example
of the way nonsense can linger.
In his most recent column, Keller
It takes a Marvel
team-up of three different
reporters, from three
different news organizations,
to perform [an] elementary
act of real-keeping.”
accused Obama of “abandoning”
Simpson-Bowles, campaigning
solely on raising taxes and offering
nothing on entitlement reform:
“If Obama had campaigned on
some version of Simpson-Bowles
rather than on poll-tested tax
hikes alone, he could now claim a
mandate from voters to do something big and bold. Most important, he would have some leverage
with members of his own base
who don’t want to touch Medicare