Fundamentals

I’m gath­er­ing, from my read­ing here and there, that most peo­ple don’t know that Her­bert Hoover famously declared that the “fun­da­men­tal busi­ness of the coun­try” was sound. (Can it be “famously” if most peo­ple don’t know it? Never mind.)

That partly explains why Repub­li­cans seem eerily com­pelled to echo Hoover; they don’t know what it makes them sound like.

Fun­da­men­tals — Paul Krug­man — Op-Ed Colum­nist — New York Times Blog

From the linked article:

For Hoover as for McCain, the insis­tence on “sound fun­da­men­tals” means that if nec­es­sary, the gov­ern­ment will throw a life pre­server to busi­ness lead­ers; the rest of us are on our own.

I’m no econ­o­mist (and I’d appre­ci­ate any insight from oth­ers) but McCain’s com­ments really do scare me. (They wouldn’t if about half of Amer­ica didn’t think he should be our next President.)