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I'm not really familiar with the policies enacted towards recovery... How "hands on" was the government in kicking the economy back into gear? Did we do much be

I'm not really familiar with the policies enacted towards recovery... How "hands on" was the government in kicking the economy back into gear? Did we do much beyond lowering interest rates? Many smaller manufacturing businesses both depended on selling to and buying from small impacted businesses... self-contained systems that keep money and management local. Restarting those economic ecosystems requires more than just lowering rates. Anecdotally, banking consolidations have made it much harder for niche local businesses to attract financing - the town where I went to college had its entire industry of small farming equipment manufacturers killed off. The big banks refused to finance a "John deer competitor" that built tractors from local parts manufacturers, even though the local farms despised buying from John Deer - their only presence was low-wage retail/repair jobs, extracting profit from the community.

forapurpose 9y ago
> How "hands on" was the government in kicking the economy back into gear? Did we do much beyond lowering interest rates? If by "we" you mean the U.S. government, it spent about $700 billion to stimulate economic activity and employment.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  The government would have spent more, but at the time the pro-austerity crowd was trying to reduce government spending. This left the federal reserve (and internationally other central banks) as the primary economic stimulator, which has it's own set of poor effects (a stimulus package can function as a jobs program, whereas low interest rates serve to increase the capital that the wealthy already own).