Hoover 2 and Some OP Agon

Krugman's column today raises the issue I did yesterday - Hoovertime in the miserable states.

Once again a Democratic president has pushed through job-creation policies that will mitigate the slump but aren’t aggressive enough to produce a full recovery. Once again much of the stimulus at the federal level is being undone by budget retrenchment at the state and local level. . . .

Also, as in the 1930s, the opponents of action are peddling scare stories about inflation even as deflation looms.

In other news, President Mark Yudof joined Chairman of the Board of Regents Richard Blum in a response to the joint Faculty Association letter that had attracted some press coverage. Take a look. My view is that if Blum and Yudof's best example of their future vision is firing 600 people at UCOP, our trouble is even worse than we thought.

I hear that in UCOP-world, senior administrators are having major second thoughts about "equity" in salary cuts for state-funded and grant-funded employees alike. One commented that "equity is in the eye of the beholder." You might want to write to President Mark Yudof (mark.yudof@ucop.edu) and/or Acting Provost Larry Pitts (lawrence.pitts@ucop.edu) to express your views.

See also the letter from leading UC scientists to Gov Schwarzenegger about the permanent damage his cuts will do to UC; and the UC-AFT letter to President Yudof.