But the Republicans did not initially stop Obama from pushing for a bigger stimulus, so we should not scapegoat them as odious a bunch as they may be.
First, the economists were to blame because they had convinced themselves and their students that the economy could at the very worst slip into an *unstable* underemployment equilibrium due to a fortuitous event or economic shock and that it would thus take only temporary and fairly modest autonomous government expenditures to push the economy back into a high employment equilibrium. Second, Obama made the not obviously incorrect calculation that the extra money in the pockets of businessmen from a bigger stimulus would not offset the blow to business confidence from a bigger debt-financed expenditures of an expansive government and that a bigger stimulus would not thus do more to revive private investment.
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