Liberal economists agree: Obama agenda will fail

[E]ven these most ardent supporters expressed doubts that his proposals would do much to alleviate unemployment, agreeing with economists and business leaders contacted by The Huffington Post Tuesday night that the speech offered little that would move the needle in the jobs market.
“If you do exactly what he’s asking for, it would make almost no difference,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and one of Obama’s most vocal progressive critics, told TPM that the President’s policies will have only a minimal impact on inequality, and argued that there’s more he could do to reverse the growing gap between the rich and poor.
“His policies are really trivial,” said Baker. “Yes, it would be good to maintain the estate tax and get the top tax rate to the Clinton era level, but the vast majority of the story was in before-tax income, not changes in tax rates. Here Obama has been as bad as [George W.] Bush.”

[F]raming the entire economic message of the speech was a strikingly retrograde, self-contradictory, and confused agenda of reviving American prosperity through mercantilism. … as Election Day, dawns they’re at risk of being largely sidelined in favor of cheap and muddled economic nationalism.