While I believe the author is correct, I think that the view is somewhat shortsighted. You cannot simply pull a half trillion dollars out of the economy and not

While I believe the author is correct, I think that the view is somewhat shortsighted. You cannot simply pull a half trillion dollars out of the economy and not expect a ripple effect into other industries. A economic multiplier of 10x brings you into the 5 trillion range, and oh, wait, there is the dot-com boom again. Edit: To clarify, I don't think that a 10x multiplier would be accurate - just trying to show the missing variables.