So it's been almost a year.

And what a year it's been. Anyway, hoisted from the comments on the SDJ, H/T to TT:

I realize that intelligent people make mistakes all of the time, but how could someone as smart as Peter Orszag have believed that clamping down on the deficit so quickly despite the collapse of and subsequent continuing weakness in aggregate demand; despite 10% unemployment; despite the meltdown of the financial system; despite interest rates near zero; despite non-existent inflation after a massive expansion of the monetary base; would be a remotely good or responsible idea? Pumping stimulus into an economy on life support "could undermine the confidence of businessmen and money managers"? The same businessmen who have continually said in survey after survey over the past 3+ years that their biggest challenge is the lack of customers buying their products?

It seems as though Washington deficit groupthink is like The Terminator: it can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear, and it will not stop--ever!--until the deficit is dead. Even--no, especially--when reality repeatedly crushes it in a hydraulic press.

Amazing--in a very, very sad, unfortunate, and destructive way.