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Showing posts with the label Economists are not Historians

Robert Reich, like Paul Krugman, is neither an historian nor an expert in foreign affairs...

... which explains his bizarre take on getting out of the recession. In a piece actually criticizing President Obama for promising to cut the deficit, Reich gives us his full take on borrowing your way to prosperity: We're in a deepening recession, in case you hadn't noticed. The biggest challenge is to ramp up aggregate demand. Yes, we have to borrow lots from the Chinese and Japanese to do this, and, yes, it's costly in terms of additional interest payments to them. But there's no choice. In fact, if the slump gets worse -- and I have every reason to fear it will because that's the direction we're heading in as fast as you can imagine -- we'll probably have to have a second stimulus. And if the second isn't enough, a third. And so on. FDR's biggest mistake was doing too little until World War II. (No one should interpret this as a recommendation for more military spending -- I'm just saying Obama will probably have to think and do much bigger ...