2012 Election

Does Tim Pawlenty Expect A Double Dip Recession?

By Michael Scherer | @michaelscherer | April 4, 2011 | +

Here is Tim Pawlenty’s “response” to President Obama’s campaign announcement.

It’s a crafty play on President Obama’s slogan, “Win the Future.” Asks Pawlenty, with super macho voice manipulation, “I’ve got a question for you. How can America win the future when we are losing the present?” As he says these words, we get a strobe flash of doomsday images: Houses for sale, a foreclosure sign, a shot of the debt clock, and an screenshot from CNBC-TV18 that reads, “Double Dip Threat Real.”

This screen shot comes from a December 2, 2010 interview with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. In the interview, Strauss-Kahn does not blame the U.S., but Europe for the double-dip threat potential.

Q: You mentioned that the possibility of a double dip recession is not probably there but it is a risk, can you expand on that?

A: Yes, our main focus, our baseline does not include a double dip and we believe that at the global level the recovery will go on. It is very strong in Asia not only in India for example, but other countries too. It is strong in Latin America, it is strong almost everywhere in the world. Even in the US, the situation is more uncertain. The only part of the world where the recovery is sluggish is Europe and that is why we are focusing on that.

But globally we expect the recovery to go on. Nevertheless there is a lot of downside risk and if one or two of them happen at the same time, the bubbles that the surge in capital inflows may create, the fact that the financial sector is not totally repaired or anything like this, if everything happens together then you may have a conjunction in which finally the recession comes back and what you called a double dip, it is not our forecast, it may happen.

I doubt Strauss-Kahn would agree with Pawlenty’s implication that double-dip fears in the U.S. would ease, and the issue of Europe and capital inflow bubbles would go away, if the former Minnesota Governor became president of the United States.

A few weeks after this interview, the Wall Street Journal surveyed economists about the risk of a double dip recession in the U.S.

For the year, they expect GDP will rise 3%. Meanwhile, they have reduced the odds of a double-dip recession to 15%, the lowest average forecast of the year, from 22% in September survey.

That suggests there is improvement, and that even when the screen shot was taken four months ago, America was not exactly losing the present, though the progress remained perilously weak.

Related Topics: tim pawlenty, 2012 Election

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  • allthingsinaname

    He has lost already.

  • mni08

    Tim Who?

  • hippooath

    Not so much expecting as hoping for it.

  • Paul-no not that one

    “I doubt Strauss-Kahn would agree with Pawlenty’s implication that double-dip fears in the U.S. would ease, and the issue of Europe and capital inflow bubbles would go away, if the Minnesota Governor became president of the United States”
    .
    I’d be happy with Minnesota’s Governor becoming president. Dayton’s been good so far.
    .
    Minnesota’s ex Governor not so much.

  • propman

    Who TF?

  • 3xfire3

    Change will take place in 2012.
    .
    The only question is, will it be Pawlenty or some other Republican who becomes President.

  • sacredh

    “The only question is, will it be Pawlenty or some other Republican who becomes President.”
    .
    I think the correct question is:
    .
    The only question is, will it be Pawlenty or some other Republican who loses to President Obama?

  • 3xfire3

    “The only question is, will it be Pawlenty or some other Republican who loses to President Obama?”
    .
    Wrong again.
    .
    Obama won in 2008 when he had no record to challenge and the American public knew little about him. Now that he has a record to defend and the American public knows him, they will not be fooled again. He is gone in 2012.

  • sacredh

    “He is gone in 2012.”
    .
    Care to make a little friendly wager on that?

  • nflfoghorn

    3x, where’s youir empirical evidence?
    .
    No Republican polls as well or better than BO…
    No Repbulican has even officially announced…
    President’s approval ratings are close to 50% – W even won with mid-40s approval…
    .
    So as Clara Peller used to say, Where’s the Beef?

  • Matt

    Does Pawlenty “expect” a double-dip? I don’t know. But is he rooting for one? You bet. And so are the rest of the Republicans who are oblivious to the substantial economic progress being made and the plummeting jobless rate that means Americans are getting back to work. Instead of cheering these developments and expressing gratitude that the worst days of our economic slowdown are behind us, they are peddling politically motivated gloom and doom that only serves to frighten Americans.
    http://www.sunstateactivist.org

  • http://scrimbul.wordpress.com scrimbul

    If someone as ignorant as Bush Jr. can get a second term after the first involved known voting fraud from the right, there’s no way BO can’t get a second term short of spewing a long string of well-deserved vulgarities at a wingnut right-wing constituent.

    2012 is locked in unless a Republican shows up who isn’t chanting ‘tax cuts’ and ‘government reduction’ as a substitute for an actual solution.

  • nflfoghorn

    God forbid we have another serious terrorist attack on our soil – then the GOP will say that it’s BO’s fault instead of Terry Jones’.

  • 3xfire3

    “3x, where’s youir empirical evidence?
    .
    No Republican polls as well or better than BO…
    No Repbulican has even officially announced…
    President’s approval ratings are close to 50% – W even won with mid-40s approval…
    .
    So as Clara Peller used to say, Where’s the Beef?”
    .
    Common Sense would tell us much about a Presidential election that is 20 months into the future.
    .
    1. At this point in the last election Obama had very little name recognition.
    2. He was not considered as a Presidential candidate.
    3. His views and political direction were unknown to almost all Americans.

    .
    Pawlenty and most serious Republican candidates have little name recognition at this point. As with Obama, that name recognition will come during the actual campaign.
    .
    The campaign will be won based on the policies presented by the candidates and the American public’s opinion of the direction they want our country to go.
    .
    In the end Obama will be judged by the American electorate on the perception of how good of a job he has done as President, not whether they like him personally.
    .
    As the nominating conventions get closer, the polls will have a lot more validity.
    Right now they mean very little.

    .

  • http://twitter.com/michaelscherer Michael Scherer

    Fixed.

  • m0mentom0ri

    “W even won with mid-40s approval”
    .
    W won against Kerry, possibly the worst Presidential candidate the Dems have ever fielded. Dukakis included.
    .
    Obama will likely win because the GOP will be forced by the Tea Partiers to field a candidate that’s as unelectable as Kerry was.
    .
    This is not a good trend.

  • m0mentom0ri

    “In the end Obama will be judged by the American electorate on the perception of how good of a job he has done as President, not whether they like him personally.”
    .
    I wish that were true.
    .
    With a media that’s already honing their inevitable ‘who would you rather have a beer with’ approach, I doubt it will be.

  • freeinpa

    “God forbid we have another serious terrorist attack on our soil – then the GOP will say that it’s BO’s fault instead of Terry Jones”
    .
    By that grand reasoning then every time an American flag is burned in Iran, Iraq, or Venezuela it’s ok to bomb it? Or is this just First amendment rights t for me but not thee.

  • freeinpa

    “Does Pawlenty “expect” a double-dip? I don’t know. But is he rooting for one? You bet”
    .
    Probably not rooting as hard as the Dems are for a government shutdown (that they are causing). Pawlenty doesn’t need to root at all. Obama’s policies are getting us there.

    He has been more concerned with re-distributing wealth to allies, taking over industries while destroying others, and spending the country in oblivion while making our great grandchildren indentured servants to an enormous debt load.

  • apr2563

    Republicans pols and their mentors, nationally and in the states, are working as hard as they can to insure a double dip. Eliminating jobs, taking away safety nets, and giving tax breaks to the wealthy will accomplish their goal.

  • fhmadvocat

    3xfire3,

    You can’t compare Obama in 2008 to any Republican candidate.

    The Republican candidate will be running against a sitting president. Obama was running for an open seat.

    Reagan, Clinton and Bush Jr. won re-election. Carter and Bush, Sr. did not. What was the difference?

    Reagan, Clinton and Bush, Jr. were not challenged in the primaries in their re-election campaigns. Carter and Bush, Sr. were. For a sitting president to be challenged, it hurts him among the voters and many members of his party sit out the general election.

    Against an imaginary Republican with no negatives, Obama might lose. However, the Republicans have to run a real person against Obama.

    Romney has the problem was not being “conservative” enough, Romneycare and the perception he would say anything to get elected.

    Pawlenty has plenty of negatives, he left his state with a $5 billion dollar deficit and he left office with a less than 50% approval rating. And he is not well known and Michele Bachman who has a lot more personality is considering a run for the presidency. They would split the vote in the midwest. Who is going to give him the money to run?

  • http://milascurtains.wordpress.com milascurtains

    seems Tim is just One and Only, who does not know, that he would never win here.

  • 3xfire3

    Dream on my little Liberal friend.
    Remember 2010.
    2012 will be more of the same.
    America has rejected your Liberal/Progressive agenda.

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