By Roger Farmer
For the past seventy years, policy makers have relied on fiscal and monetary policy to combat recessions. Monetary policy works by lowering real interest rates and stimulating private expenditure. Since the nominal interest rate on three month treasury bills has now reached zero in the US, the scope for further easing is limited. This has led to an intellectual tsunami of proposals for a Keynesian-style fiscal stimulus of historic proportions.
By Martin Wolf
Is the UK on the road to disaster? Those who believe it is insist that it is mad to tackle a calamity caused by excessive borrowing with still more borrowing, this time by the government as borrower and lender of last resort. These criticisms are wrong and right: wrong, if the government remains creditworthy; right, if it does not.
By Francis M. Bator
Shoring up lenders, unclogging lending, even direct action to limit the slide in house prices, will no longer suffice to prevent a severe recession. Only public or private spending on output will prevent spiralling cutbacks in production, jobs and incomes.
Action to boost spending should be temporary, phased out as the economy recovers. But it should be large enough to make a difference. It takes about $500bn growth in total spending each year just to keep unemployment rates and capacity utilization constant. Each extra percent of unemployment costs $250bn-300bn per year in lost pre-tax wages and profits.
Here are two examples of fiscal action that would be easy to implement, quick to boost spending, and unusual enough to make timely reversal credible.
| About this blog | Blog guide |
