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Brown's Woes Offers Obama Reality Check

Voters don't reward economic competence after crisis: Krugman

By Jason Farago, Newser Staff

Posted Jun 8, 2009 8:50 AM CDT

(Newser) – The Bush administration has taken much of the blame for the American recession, but a "huge housing bubble and a financial crisis" were always on the cards, as Paul Krugman writes for the New York Times. Writing from London, where voters gave Gordon Brown a pummeling in Thursday's elections, Krugman observes that Britain shows what might have happened if the 2000 presidential election had gone the other way.

In the late 1990s Brown, like his US counterpart Robert Rubin, "bought fully into the dogma that the market knows best, that less regulation is more." Since the crisis hit, the PM has acted boldly to support banks, and Britain's future is rosier than that of other parts of Europe—but voters are turning away. That should scare the Obama team, Krugman writes: in a crisis, the electorate will punish whoever was "in power when the bad stuff happened."

[Images (5)]

[Quotes (1)]

Gordon Brown during the 1997 general election campaign, with Tony Blair in the background. Labour has governed for 12 years, offering a view of what might have happened in a US without George W. Bush. (Getty Images)

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown attends a meeting in Stratford, east London, where he spoke with local Labour Party activists Sunday June 7, 2009. (AP Photo/ Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Brown clung fiercely to his job Friday, defying calls from some within his beleaguered Labour party to resign. (AP Photo/ Carl Court, pool)

Bookmaker Robin Hutchison writes down the odds for the next Labour Party leader on a blackboard for display outside the Houses of Parliment in London, Friday, June 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Gordon Brown listens to a question during a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday, April 27, 2009. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

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If I were a member of the Obama administration’s economic team, I’d be looking across the Atlantic and muttering, “There but for the disgrace of Bush v. Gore go I.” - Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist

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Brown's Woes Offers Obama Reality Check