It was the heavy spending. And it didn't cause inflation because in a recession, the velocity of money decreases drastically. Reagan wasn't a tax cutter. He was one of the biggest spenders in history and massively blew up the budget. He knew what he was doing. Only the product he created was not of much value to anyone other than the defense industry. Obama's product will be of great value for decades to come .. just like Eisenhower's national highway system.
You can't be for real. 1.) Volcker decreased the money supply to squeeze out inflation. The recession was a direct and predictable result. 2.) Aggressive assertion is not an argument. Either you have data that proves that heavy spending (which would have been inflationary and completely contradictory to the Fed's policy) resulted in a rebound or you have no argument. Of course, you're going to have to scrape the effects of tax rate cuts out of the results. 3.) Calling defense spending worthless is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Defense is one of the only legitimate functions of government and I'm guessing that you think that finishing off the Cold War is without any benefit. A better example of useless government spending is...let's seee.... Medicare, Medicaid, most welfare program - for a start. 4.) Obama won't produce a product because government is not a producer of anything but sand in the gears of the economy. If governments were really good at producing things then I would have never left the Soviet Union because I would have been living in the most prosperous economy on earth instead of a shit hole.
It was my original post. Reagan's big spending in the early 80s, leading to the Great Bull. This one should be bigger, since the spending is smarter. The key is, no problems with inflation, because of lack of money velocity.
We disagree. I think highways, education, technological infrastructure, and energy efficiencies, will yield a much. much higher growth return than lousy bombs which just rust away - unless you start a war and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people with them. Time will tell. But I am totally in.
The biggest infrastructure project that I know of is Boston's Big Dig, there are better ways to grow an economy than that type of corrupt and wasteful spending. Unfortunately that is what I see coming, numerous big digs all over the country. The least civic minded responsible citizens can do is make sure that this infrastructre spending is accountable and transparent. http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/12/07/obamas-economic-stimulus-planbig-dig-deja-vu/
I don't think so. I think you will see a rebuilding of the electrical grid, broadband everywhere, mass transportation funding, research and migration into fuel efficiency (e.g. autos, buildings) to get off this dependency on the Middle East, better education, renewed highway infrastructure. It has been a long time since we had a really competent administration, so you are probably not use to seeing really smart spending. Eisenhower was a great example of a really smart President (he was the first to warn against the military/industrial complex upon leaving office). Kennedy was smart as was Reagen (in his own way). You'll see some big growth here, and a lot less ideology based upon some Armageddon principle. Anyway, I am betting really big on this, and I think America will also.
Rich, your original article was a partisan bit of fluff. Aggressive assertion is not an argument and data free assertions are not factual. As for education - as a former math teacher I can assure you that it's almost all wasted money. We spend more per student than Europe and we get much poorer results. You're not seriously naive enough to think that bombs would rust away until the U.S. decides to start a war, thus defense spending is useless. You do understand that if someone decides to start a war with the United States, we have to be prepared, right? Your highways and levies are not going to mean much if you're taken over by another country. And you do know that a strong military is a deterrent to that attempt, don't you?
Totally laughable. At one point we had over 30,000 nuclear weapons. Enough to blow this planet to kingdom come many times over. You want to talk about waste? But I had to put up with paranoids for most of my life. I am glad we have a real pro-growth government finally in place, as opposed to pro-rich. Two different things entirely.
Lets hope you are right as the national grid should be an infrastructure priority. I would to see private money incentivized to come off the sidelines and invest in innovation. For example, a government program that matched private money 2:1 in areas of R&D that can be targeted as log jams in innovation (ie a viable car battery to replace the gas tank which requires some breakthroughs in material science). In fact Obama should appoint a committee (something like the British DIUS) to look at the big areas where innovation needs a push to breakthrough that will bring the most ecomic benefits and plough money in to private companies via tax incentives and incentivizing private investment. Another area where he can help is by pushing protocol standardization in areas that are currently held hostage to corporate squabbling, WiMax comes to mind. A huge WiMax roll out would be a good use of infrastructure $ and it wouldnât even require much government spending, just give the requisite tax incentives and private money will do the rest. www.dius.gov.uk/speeches/pearson_uk...nological+innovation&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us This also looks interesting: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/11/kerry_pushes_hi.html