"How about letting the productive capacity of the economy work for consumers rather than for politicians?" Seriously, what are you talking about? If the govern

"How about letting the productive capacity of the economy work for consumers rather than for politicians?" Seriously, what are you talking about? If the government gives a large tax cut to every citizen, that citizen is also a consumer. When they take that tax cut money and they go spend it, then the large deficit is being put to work for consumers rather than for politicians. Last time I checked, the Federal government was the consumer of about 1/3rd of the Federal budget. The rest of the budget is income transfers that are spent by someone else (for instance, Social Security, and also the money transfers to state and local governments, who then become the final consumers). There are situations where it makes sense for the government to be the consumer of goods and services -- building bridges and ports and airports and such. Also, running the military. One can make the case that the USA would benefit from infrastructure spending right now. However, my original comment was completely neutral on the subject of who should spend the deficit. I only made the point that when productive capacity is going to waste due to lack of demand (in the context of this article, following a catastrophic shock to the financial system) then Congress should ensure a deficit sufficient to ensure the use of that productive capacity.