What the Stimulus Accomplished By THE EDITORIAL BOARD, The New York Times, FEB. 22, 2014. ["The (Obama) stimulus ... prevented a second recession that could have turned into a depression. It created or saved an average of 1.6 million jobs a year for four years. It raised the nation’s economic output by 2 to 3 percent from 2009 to 2011. It prevented a significant increase in poverty — without it, 5.3 million additional people would have become poor in 2010."]
Barack Obama Is Totally Torpedoing Deficit Levels By Sam Ro, Business Insider, October 24, 2013. [Obama has been one of the most effective presidents in American history to reduce deficit levels.]
Thank the GOP for the shutdown and holding the economy hostage By Dean Baker, The Guardian, September 30, 2013. [Cutbacks in government spending directly reduce employment and curtail growth. Unfortunately, Republicans don't get that.]
Austerity Won’t Work if the Roof Is Leaking By ROBERT H. FRANK, The New York Times, Published: July 6, 2013. [Fear about government debt has put the brakes on much American infrastructure investment, even when the future benefits far outweigh the repayment costs.]
Austerity and Keynes can coexist By Charles Lane, The Washington Post, Published: May 20, 2013. [On James Buchanan, "the harshest postwar critic" of Keynesian fiscal policy, the author writes: "Buchanan’s contribution was to remind everyone that, in a democracy, deficit spending is very easy to turn on and very hard to turn off." This argument is challenged by Jonathan Chait and Paul Krugman.]
The Bush Tax-Cut Failure By BRUCE BARTLETT, Economix (blog), The New York Times, May 21, 2013. [No hard evidence has ever emerged that the Bush tax cuts stimulated the economy, an economist writes.]
How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled By Paul Krugman, The New York Review of Books, June 6, 2013. []
Best Stimulus Package May Be Food Stamps By Evan Soltas, Bloomberg, May 6, 2013. [.]
Economists See Deficit Emphasis as Impeding Recovery By JACKIE CALMES and JONATHAN WEISMAN, The New York Times, May 8, 2013. [After two years of stalemate on how to spur job creation and slash deficits, the consensus is that fiscal tightening has been a drag on economic recovery.]
What Should The U.S. Learn From Europe's Woes? by TOM GJELTEN, Morning Edition, December 06, 2012. [Is contractionary fiscal policy contractionary? What's the better form of contractionary fiscal policy, tax increases or spending cuts? Does it matter?]
Was The Stimulus Package 'Money Well Spent'? Fresh Air, National Public Radio, January 26, 2012. [Listen to this informative radio interview with Michael Grabell, author of Money Well Spent? What Really Happened to the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus Plan, Public Affairs, New York.]
Stimulus, austerity and the weltgeist by M.S., Democracy in America (blog), The Economist, February 1, 2012. [The short version: The debate about whether government spending should rise when the economy is in recession is over: it most definitely should. The only remaining question is what kinds of government spending help most in a recession.]
What Really Matters for Growth (It’s Not Tax Rates) by Bruce Bartlett, The Fiscal Times, June 10, 2011. [Here, an economist argues that at times it may be necessary to raise taxes to spur economic growth. In the medium run, growth rates depend on investment rates. Although, in theory, domestic investment can be financed with foreign savings, often the only way to boost domestic investment is to boost domestic saving. Domestic saving consists of saving by households, businesses, and the government. Evidence suggests that tax rates do not affect savings by households and businesses. Therefore, tax rates can boost domestic saving only by raising saving by the government. Only a tax increase can raise the government's saving. Therefore, only a tax hike can be expected to raise our saving, investment, and growth. And Bruce Bartlett argues that history is on his side: tax increases in 1982 and 1993 led to faster growth.]