Byron Dorgan: “I listened with interest today to my colleague from Arizona, and now my colleague from Minnesota, on this subject of…”

“I listened with interest today to my colleague from Arizona, and now my colleague from Minnesota, on this subject of economic recovery. This is a critically important subject. This is not the normal run-of-the-mill policy that we debate here in the Senate. Our economy is in some trouble, and I am not sure any of us quite understand how much trouble. It is a new economy. We don't have models by which we can judge what happened in the past and therefore project what might happen in the future. This is a new global economy that operates and behaves in ways that are different than perhaps represent our conventional understanding. I know my friend from Minnesota mentioned that our colleague from Texas, who is in the Chamber, came from a background of teaching economics, I believe, in college. I, too, briefly taught economics in college. I like to say that I have gone on, nonetheless, to overcome that experience and lead a reasonably productive life. The field of economics is not much more than psychology pumped up with a little helium. We have all kinds of economists in this country who will give us their best guess of what has happened and what will happen. But nobody really knows.…”