Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Does anyone expect the stimulus to work?

Not consumers, who have the lowest confidence since the 1960's.
UPDATE: Shiller wants fiscal policy to stimulate our animal spirits:
the sense of trust we have in each other, our sense of fairness in economic dealings, and our sense of the extent of corruption and bad faith. When animal spirits are on ebb, consumers do not want to spend and businesses do not want to make capital expenditures or hire people.

... Especially now, when conventional monetary policy is ineffective, since short-term interest rates on safe assets are close to zero, Keynesian theory would argue that the government should have a fiscal target. If spending would otherwise be less than full employment GDP, the government should put more money into people's pockets.

1 comment:

  1. Stimulus bill moves us closer to nationalized health care and rationing

    The House of Representatives approved an $819 billion economic stimulus package Wednesday. The party line vote was a blow to Barack Obama's alleged desire for bipartisanship. All the Republicans and 11 democrats voted against the bill. One thing in the bill that went mostly unnoticed was a new bureaucracy called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.

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