Now would you rely upon that practitioner the next time? I think not. Well today in the NY Times we have Romer pontificating again, the same Romer whose January 11, 2009 document foretold the wonderful world at the end of the Stimulus. Never happened, we have what we have now.
She bemoans:
The lesson here is that fiscal stimulus can help a depressed economy recover — an idea supported by new studies of the 2009 stimulus package. Additional short-run tax cuts or increases in government investment would help deal with our unemployment crisis.
What of the idea that monetary and fiscal policy can do little if unemployment is caused by structural factors, like a mismatch between workers’ skills and available jobs? As I discussed in a previous column, such factors are probably small today.
In place of the tepid budget agreement now in place, we could pass a bold plan with more short-run spending increases and tax cuts, coupled with much more serious, phased-in deficit reduction. By necessity, the plan would tackle entitlement reform and gradually raise tax revenue. This would be the World War II approach to our problems.
Now she was so far off almost three years ago why should we trust Chuckles now? If she had been an engineer all of her bridges would most likely have collapsed, and yet she wants us to build more.
Remember, marcroeconomics is a political philosophy, each person sees it in their own way, often masked with equations, but then again one can mask a great deal in equations, especially meaningless ones.
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