If a real recovery occurs in the next four or five years, it will come about the same way a recovery took place after the 1930s: from a huge infusion of government spending. It won’t, one hopes, require the justification of war, but it will have to consist in the fiscal equivalent of war

.
The New Republic
Liberals’ Strange Retreat on Government Spending
By John B. Judis
John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
August 8, 2011


Liberals’ Strange Retreat on Government Spending


Some excerpts :

THE ECONOMICS ARE familiar by now, but under attack from the right and insufficiently understood in the center, including at one of our woe-befallen, politically compromised rating agencies. There are two types of recessions: the short-term, cyclical wage-price recessions that prevailed after World War Two and that were manipulated by monetary policy, and the deeper recessions, or depressions, like those that occurred in the 1890s or 1930s. What is happening today is more similar to past depressions. It was brought about by a financial crash, which creates a backlog of private debt, coming on top of a slowdown in industrial production caused by global overcapacity. The result has been a paralyzed private sector.

There are three kinds of measures that are needed to “solve” this kind of recession: first, short-term measures that revive consumer and investment demand; second, measures that will stimulate new domestic outlets for private investment; and third, steps that prevent the demand government creates from being siphoned off primarily in imports. For the first purpose, the best kind of measures are those that create jobs for the unemployed—whether in the public or the private sector—and that eliminate or reduce debt directly, for instance in housing or school loans. Tax cuts are not as effective because, given the level of private debt, consumers are likely to save rather than spend them. With interest rates already near zero, Federal Reserve monetary measures are also not very effective.

There is a copious amount of historical evidence that cutting spending—and cutting government jobs—is more likely to deepen a downturn. Start with the United States, Germany, and Great Britain in the first years of the Great Depression; the United States in 1937; and Japan in 1997. In each of these cases, cutting spending made things worse. To be sure, large deficits can harm an economy; but not when capacity is idle, unemployment is high, interest rates are not rising, inflation is non-existent, and a government’s currency and Treasury bills are still widely in demand.

...............

The first consideration has to do with the sheer gravity of the situation. What is at stake goes beyond an abstract rate of unemployment, or the prospect of a Republican White House in 2012, or even the misery of the long-term unemployed. From the beginning, this recession has been global. Germany has to take leadership in Europe, but the United States is still the world’s largest economy, the principal source of consumer and investment demand, and the banking capital of the world. If the United States fails to revive its economy, and to lead in the restructuring of the international economy, then it’s unlikely that other economies in the West will pull themselves out of the slump.

And as the experience of the 1930s testified, a prolonged global downturn can have profound political and geopolitical repercussions. In the U.S. and Europe, the downturn has already inspired unsavory, right-wing populist movements. It could also bring about trade wars and intense competition over natural resources, and the eventual breakdown of important institutions like European Union and the World Trade Organization. Even a shooting war is possible. So while the Obama administration would face a severe challenge in trying to win support for a boost in government spending, failing to do so would be far more serious than the ruckus that Tea Party and Republican opposition could create over the next year.

.....................