Kudlow: Look, you’ve got some pretty convincing stuff [in Grant’s Observer]. This is the most stimulus we have ever seen. I think what you’re saying is the Fed has poured in 18 percent of GDP. Fiscally, spending and taxing 12 percent of GDP. Those are world records. But this isn’t even the worst downturn.
Grant: By the numbers, this is a garden-variety recession. So far, statistically, on the GDP numbers, it is ordinary. What is extraordinary of course is Wall Street’s self-inflicted wounds in credit. However, what is truly momentous is the government’s response. Nothing like it. So there have been 11 recessions/depressions since 1929. On average, the sum of the fiscal and the monetary response as we index them is like 2.9 percent of GDP.
A garden-variety recession this one is not. By Kudlow thinks Grant is “smart”. Kudlow is overestimating the amount of fiscal stimulus with his 12% claim. I suspect he is counting the decline in tax revenues as a result of the recession as part of the fiscal stimulus. But how does one take stock numbers represented exchanges of assets (monetary policy) and call that additions to expenditure flows (18% of GDP)? Most economists would argue that we have had too little stimulus for such an enormous recession but these two clowns think the stimulus is a “world record” while the recession is very modest.
Makes you think those are really not valid impressions, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteBut someone must like them being aired on the MSM.
We shouldn't measure recessions by GDP. If we can keep our output going up at some small level, but only at the cost of throwing many millions of people out on the street and holding down the incomes of many millions of others, the economy is failing to perform its chief functions.
ReplyDeleteGod Bless you for the mention.
ReplyDelete"It is in the shelter of each other that the people live."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJtq6OmD-_Y&feature=player_embedded
dont try to explain kudlow...i've heard enough of him to know he makes up numbers as he speaks...
ReplyDeleteHow do these people manage to acquire incomes? Why would other people want to sponsor their blatant lies?
ReplyDeleteThe answers to these questions has nothing to do with economics or truth. It has only to do with the desire to create and maintain a social divide in which the very wealthy direct all efforts of the commoners as the "divine right of kings". It is a religious matter only. No rationality, no reality, no logic can intrude.
Attempting to apply facts and realities in such a religious oder is hopeless. The people of this nation have been so shut out of real education concerning history and _real_ economics that they will blindly follow the _best_ liars -- the conservatives -- confusing self serving lies with leadership. The never ending drama of privatizing gain and socializing the costs.
http://www.greatervoice.org/econ/quotes/Democratic_Paradox.php