I was thinking that the very small silver lining to all this might be that the next time we have a major contraction of the economy, no one will be able to say that the government didn’t do enough. All I hear from current “authorities” is that the great depression was so bad because fdr didn’t throw enough money at the problem fast enough.
I wish I could say that “we’re all doubting Keyes” by now, but it’s not going to be surprising if “just a little more” rationalizing is all that’s needed to continue this anti-economic, emotive nonsense.
Imo, the best anyone in the know (i.e. who knows real economics) can do is probably something along the lines of “Hey, look, they’re bailing stuff out, way more than they did in the great depression, and it’s only making things worse”. This line might be more relevant by 2010 rather than now, while some effects are delayed.
I agree. I don’t think this insanity is going to stop anytime soon. I’m just hoping that the next time we have a financial meltdown, 20, 30, 50 years from now, the keynesian response will have been shown to be a failure by this debacle. It seems all they’ve learned from the great depression is that the government didn’t do enough. It will be hard to level the same criticism at them after all that has been done, and all that is surely still to be done.
As long as economics relies on positivist-empirical approaches rather than rational-deductive reasoning, bad ideas will continue to plague us I’m afraid.
An idea can be devastatingly bad, but you can fabricate statistics that make it look good anytime.
Exactly, no matter how much money is thrown at anything, anybody can say it isn’t enough, I hardly think that anybody could say that FDR didn’t do much, and yet, it still isn’t enough.