“If state and local governments are condensing their balance sheets, they’re laying people off. They’re cutting spending on equipment. Capital spending is cut e

“If state and local governments are condensing their balance sheets, they’re laying people off. They’re cutting spending on equipment. Capital spending is cut early during downturns. All of that is sucking demand right out of the economy.” Clearly, the US is suffering from the Dutch Disease, except instead of oil it's the dollar that is creating the problem. So just let the government hire everybody. Build lots of stuff, housing and factories and infrastructure. Print the dollars to pay for all of it, until the dollar collapses. American labor is now cheap again, so those factories can produce at internationally competitive cost. This is similar to how China does it. The key is that you can't devalue the currency if you have a service economy that relies on cheap imports, but that's exactly the way the US is headed right now.