Numbers show that about 45.4 million Americans, roughly one-seventh of the population, received nutrition aid last October, the most recent month of data. Unemployment was 5% that month. The last time unemployment fell to that level, in April 2008, 28 million Americans used food stamps, and the program cost less than half of what the government paid out last year. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-feed-one-in-seven-americans-despite-recovery I'm not sure what "recovery" they talk about. Stock markets?
Step 1: Change the rules to allow more people to receive food stamps. Step 2: Analyze the number of people on food stamps as if the rules didn't change. Step 3: Conclude poverty is rising!
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The stimulus was about half the size the standard Keynesian theory recommended, and the prediction from standard Keynesian analysis was for a very slow, intermittently stagnating "recovery" in consequence. The last crash like this gave us a rise of fascism and WWII.
Anything Paul Krugman wrote at length would be the easiest - he's a mainstream, conventional, Keynesian economist with several books out. But here's Krugman from January of 'o9, in the New York Times: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithmetic-wonkish-but-important/ Here's a critic of Krugman's, from 2009: http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/krugman-obama-stimulus-already-too-small Here's Krugman from 2010, when it was already apparent that his analysis from 2009 (a completely conventional, mainstream economic number crunch) was spot on: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-did-we-know-the-stimulus-was-too-small/?_r=0 But really - this was common knowledge on the left. The fact that most of the supposed "stimulus" was tax cuts and a lot of the rest was low-efficiency pork, the fact that it was far too small even counting the nonfunctional tax cuts for rich folks and the corporate welfare pork, and so forth, was all out in the open and well-considered by the left. And the fact that even now, years later, with the results in, we still have to repeat and link and argue and defend the basic facts of what happened, that simple physical and historical reality is so completely alien to the public discourse that people treat its occasional emergence into view as some kind of improbable claim that needs defending is the most striking feature of the modern political scene in America.
LOL Time: Paul Krugman: An Alien Invasion Could Fix the Economy World Finance: Failing banks, winning economy: the truth about Iceland’s recovery We should have let the banks file for bankruptcy. Instead we bailed the crooks out, and they're right back to stealing. Take Hathaway for example, it's said he threatened to tank the economy if he and his cronys weren't bailed out - on the backs of the middle class tax payer. What did he do? Bought hard assets with his bailout. Let the dust settle and then laid off a few more thousand employees. Ask the Japanese about QE, they're on 11. We'll see how that works out in America. See, I'm fairly certain the temperament of your average American isn't to patiently wait for a quarter of a century for the Leaders to "Fix" the economy. My guess is they'll vote for "A" leader to fix the rich, along with any other scapegoat that needs some scapeing. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! OH MY GAWDS and *GAAAASP* Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Don't worry, QE4-eva Pro Edition is right around the corner. And who knows, if America is lucky, there'll be jerbs at McDonalds making a fat $15/hour! How nice is that?! Of course, a McSlime meal will run around $22 a pop, but hey, that's okay - inflation is goood. One thing you may want to keep in mind when thinking of Krugman, is he thinks killing people (as in WWII) is the path to prosperity. Never mind Americans went hungry during the war. It's not like life was good. People scarified and rationed. Fat chance getting Amooricans to behave accordingly in this day and age. Could you imagine? No air condition or internet for a month - Holy Jesus, the riots would be insane. You DID see how Americans "pulled together" during Katrina? The America of the 1940s is long gone. That was a conservative America of hard working people with traditional family values. Most believed in Sky Daddy - as an example. Nothing like the America of today. The America of today pulled up water trucks and made money off Katrina. The America of today is filled with stories of children being raped while waiting to be rescued. We're nothing like the 1930s and 40s America. And, minus a WWIII, there won't be a world-wide market and manufacturing powerhouse is going to produce and sell to after Krugman's "Good War". Aliens or otherwise. Anyway, blowing shit up is not the path to prosperity. Letting crooked banks go bust is though. And sending criminal bankers and ex-bankers who financially gained off the GFC is another path. While ex-bankers might not be sent to prison (although many should) their assets can be scrutinized and then 'taxed' from them. Jesus, people at Goldman literally cooked the books for Greece, leading them right into a severe depression. How were they rewarded? Not with jail time. More like bonuses. Which is why they're buying the services of that crook Hillary as POTUS.
Uh, no, I've actually read Krugman. He's in favor of high-multiple Keynesian stimulus for economies in a liquidity trap. Absolutely, the US should have done what Iceland did about its banks. And - if you remember - us lefties recommended that, at the time (especially: the imposition of serious financial regulation and capital controls, the prosecution of the bad guys, the protection of private depositors as a priority, and the eventual provision of relief to mortgage borrowers under the deregulated fiasco). Also, the Keynesian loans Iceland took on would have had to have come from the US government itself rather than the IMF, in the form of trillions in deficit stimulus lending (because the IMF wasn't big enough, and would hardly have been willing), and nobody in Washington was willing to borrow that much - as Krugman in frustration pointed out. That's what you had in mind, right - rigorous State re-regulation of the banking industry, imposition of tight capital controls by the State, takeover of central banking functions by the State, huge State borrowing for Keynesian stimulus, all that good stuff?
