A couple of years ago, there was a small number of people, maybe a couple of hundred in the country, who studied the Great Depression and other financial crises, trying to learn which solutions helped and which didn’t, trying out models, writing scholarly papers and going to conferences to talk about their work in front of their peers. These people are experts. We keep them around because we might actually need them. Like now.

When the crisis arrives, their number can be augmented quickly with other people in the economics field, who can come up to full intellectual speed in short order. We call these people experts too.

Paul Krugman is one of the first group. He wrote a book in 1999 on the Great Depression, and updated it last year. Joseph Stiglitz came up to speed almost immediately. Their thinking, and that of others in their field, forms the basis of the solutions we need. Their reasons for their solutions are complicated and difficult to understand. For this purpose, we have a whole lot of intermediaries, people who can read Krugman and Stiglitz, and translate the rationales for the rest of us. These are a kind of expert, generalists who can read and understand complex things quickly and accurately, and can explain them to other people more clearly than the experts can. They are also helpful in working out the details of how to do what the experts think we should do. President Obama, anyone?

It used to be that we had people who served as the intermediaries between average people and the experts. Those intermediaries were unions, political clubs, and a wide variety of other groups. Journalists also played a role, as translators and explainers. With this cascade of knowledge, people know enough to make sensible decisions. In the legislature, we had staffers, who read this stuff and grasped it quickly.

That process is about the same today on the left. Unions still educate their members, for example. Political clubs are now blogs, but there is plenty of back and forth as people work to understand the theories. And many journalists are blogging too. Their input is very valuable, as we try to master new stuff. This is a great process. It really works if enough people are willing to invest the time and energy into the tedious task of understanding new and complicated ideas. Like we do here.

But that process has totally failed everywhere else. The stimulus bill is a perfect example. If you read, watch or listen to the corporate media, you learn that the important issue, the one worth talking about, is how the President packaged it. It’s the presentation, not the policy. Olbermann learned that from Beltway Bloviaters E.J. Dionne, and Howard Kurtz Thursday night. These people, and the rest of their breed, think the nation’s economic crisis is another contest, like the election. They are counting votes and arguing about optics. Optics? We’re heading down the economic drain and these fools are talking about their perceptions of the politics of the solutions?

Congress isn’t doing any better. The Democrats have apparently listened to the experts, and maybe want to do something, even if it’s weak tea, unless the Blue Dogs decide otherwise. The Republicans listen to their PR hacks, and let ideologues decide what they support. After all, ideology is more important than expertise.

These "leaders" act like they are behaving properly, when it is blindingly obvious that they are dancing like monkeys to some calliope only they can hear. Our leaders are distractions from the real problem. These people are clowns.

But what’s worse is that this is fine with the general public. Everybody believes they are entitled to have an opinion on the crisis: do we need a stimulus package, and what should be in it. The corporate media encourages this by covering the legislation like an election. Elections are about choosing politicians. By that logic, we can pick policy like we do politicians: Who has the best campaign. That is idiotic. We must all be idiots to think we are able to figure this one out, and even bigger idiots to let a bunch of PR hacks tell us how to manage this problem.

We are a nation of idiots led by clowns.