Economically bankrupt

Sean Aday at the Gadflyer sums up the latest survey by the Economist:

Long story short: The economists who responded to the survey (only 56 out of 100 asked, it should be noted -- this is a small sample) agree that Bush's policies have been a disaster and are worried about the damage he would do in a second term.

Read his summary, or check out the PDF here.

*UPDATE* MIT Sloan School of Management Dean Richard Schmalensee, who worked on Bush's campaign in 2000, has decided to endorse John Kerry:

“I found the first Bush administration congenial on economic policy, and at the start, I found this president, when he was campaigning, congenial,” Schmalensee said. “[It was a] class of smart people, but I’m not backing it now.”

He said he was uneasy with the size of the tax cuts signed by Bush and pointed out that, while Ronald Reagan cut taxes in 1981 and brought down the top tax rates, taxes were raised several times later on. Schmalensee said there is no such flexibility now in America.

“We are in a situation where our deficits are being financed by the Japanese and Chinese central banks. This is not a terribly comfortable position,” Schmalensee said.

(snip)

“What I find shocking is in the Republican rhetoric,” Schmalensee said. “Nobody can live with long-term structural deficits, so you cut taxes and that forces a cut in spending ... This administration has absolutely not restrained spending.”

Of the roughly $125 billion increase in spending between the 2000 and 2004 fiscal years, about $20 billion went to homeland security, according to Schmalensee.

“What a good conservative Republican does is cut spending under these conditions, and what this administration has done is to spend more and more,” Schmalensee said. “I think the answer has to be higher taxes.”

Like DeLong, Schmalensee concluded by endorsing Kerry.

“On balance, I think the choice is between a liberal Democrat ... who at least tries to think through issues, and a conservative Republican who governs not from the center, but from the right, who has made disaster after disaster in policy area after policy area and doesn’t seem capable, on the evidence we have, of running a thoughtful policy,” Schmalensee said. “I think this is a reasonably easy choice, if not necessarily a pleasant one.”