David Brooks is coming around....

The reality of our economic emergency is finally dawning upon a lot of very smart people with large platforms from which to sound the alarms. Tom Friedman (left center) joined the club in the past two weeks or so, and now David Brooks (right center) is there as well. Paul Krugman (left) has been there for a while, but we still have far too few on the hard right who get it. In any event, we can only consider Mr Brooks' recent awakening as good news, as the more folks out there who understand the emergency, the better the policy response is likely to be.

Here's an excerpt from a fun 'conversation blog' at the Times this morning, in which Brooks and Gail Collins exchange thoughts: http://theconversation.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/obamas-to-do-list/

Brooks writes:

For years, I’ve been reading alarmed commentators like Martin Wolf of The Financial Times and thinking them a bit on the outer edge of pessimistic thought. Now I am not so sure. Now I think this economic crisis could be like nothing we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Big-name economists are talking seriously about another depression.
In that context, I don’t think we can do anything but fixate on this. That is, I think the president should spend 50 percent of his time on the banking crisis, 25 percent of his time on getting our allies to coordinate with a global stimulus package and 25 percent of his time beginning work on a second round of stimulus.

Amen to all that, and welcome aboard Mr Brooks!