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Assuming what you say is true (I’m not convinced, though), it didn’t work. There were recessions in 1958, 1960-61, 1969-70, 1973-75, 1980, 1981-1982 [0]. And ac

Assuming what you say is true (I’m not convinced, though), it didn’t work. There were recessions in 1958, 1960-61, 1969-70, 1973-75, 1980, 1981-1982 [0]. And actually, yes there is broad support for stimulus. Bush #2 gave out helicopter money, and we had Quantitative Easing where the Fed bought treasuries for a few years after 2008. And, in fact, the current Fed chair just lowered interest rates on recession fears. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Un...

piker 7y ago
> and we had Quantitative Easing where the Fed bought treasuries for a few years after 2008. And, in fact, the current Fed chair just lowered interest rates on recession fears. Not to necessarily disagree with your first points, but these latter two examples are "monetary policy" which is supposed to be independent of political processes and distinguishable from "fiscal policy" which is the spending of the US govt and necessarily political.
lkrubner 7y ago
A comment on Hacker News is not the right place to get into a conversation about the evolution of thought regarding the effectiveness of monetary policy, versus fiscal policy, but our current understanding did not exist before 1980 and Presidents did engage in stimulus spending, which they often assumed could at least party overcome the actions of the central bank. Also, as piker said, some of your examples confuse monetary and fiscal stimulus. But about fiscal stimulus: There was widespread fear of a recession in the early 1960s, which was part of Kennedy's motivation for more spending on Nasa and the military. Also, there were 2 tax cuts. The expansion from 1961 to 1969 became the longest in USA history, up till that time. Reagan ran absolutely massive budget deficits, which lead a very long expansion, from 1982 to 1990.

piker 7y ago

> and we had Quantitative Easing where the Fed bought treasuries for a few years after 2008. And, in fact, the current Fed chair just lowered interest rates on recession fears. Not to necessarily disagree with your first points, but these latter two examples are "monetary policy" which is supposed to be independent of political processes and distinguishable from "fiscal policy" which is the spending of the US govt and necessarily political.

lkrubner 7y ago

A comment on Hacker News is not the right place to get into a conversation about the evolution of thought regarding the effectiveness of monetary policy, versus fiscal policy, but our current understanding did not exist before 1980 and Presidents did engage in stimulus spending, which they often assumed could at least party overcome the actions of the central bank. Also, as piker said, some of your examples confuse monetary and fiscal stimulus. But about fiscal stimulus: There was widespread fear of a recession in the early 1960s, which was part of Kennedy's motivation for more spending on Nasa and the military. Also, there were 2 tax cuts. The expansion from 1961 to 1969 became the longest in USA history, up till that time. Reagan ran absolutely massive budget deficits, which lead a very long expansion, from 1982 to 1990.