By the time I post this, the references will be kind of dated. Such is life, I started the outline during my week off and didn't want to spend too much time on it.
So, read this piece here.
Now, Krugman is a smart guy. One of those folks out there who make sense a lot of the time. His views may piss off some of the rabid, but they are usually reasoned and worthy of your time and thought. Here he is saying is that what we need to do is just spend a ton more money. I will even allow that it appeared to work fairly damn well in the period 1940-1960.
The long term consequences of his central thesis (just spend money) are hidden by the convenient fact that we had free rein over the industrial world (which we had conveniently left as a monopoly thanks to the US Army Air Corps) and the Marshall Plan, which allowed us to keep our factories running at full tilt, rebuilding the rubble that Mssrs. Lemay and Doolittle so politely left us.
He also stubbornly refuses to note the serious problems that the country went through re-integrating the troops. Please note below the unemployment rate in the years following the demobilization. (Thanks to the folks over at Calculated Risk). Please note that the current recession is around 1/2 the depth of the bad boy following WWII.
1 comment:
Is that red line on the chart 2007 to 2008? That's what it looks like. In which case there are many months to the right of where it stops that need to be drawn.
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