again or you get another big natural disaster. are we headed for a double dip? boy, i sure hope not. but these signs, just what happened the last few weeks, you ve had more companies, paul, as you know, laying off workers, major companies like sisco, nobody s hiring right now. the housing market stinks. consumers aren t spending, so you just wonder where the job growth is going to come from. and obama is in a bit of a vice here right now. because they spent the 800 billion dollars in 2009 and 2010 to prop up the economy, and you ve got a little bump up in the economy from that and now the debt is so big, you can t continue to borrow, so i think that keynesian economics have run its course. paul: they have thrown every part of the keynesian arsenal at this, near zero it rates for two and a half years, cash for clunkers, mortgage policy, housing tax
mortgage policy, housing tax credits and here we are under 2% growth and 9% unemployment. what s the lesson of the policy choice sns. well, the short lesson they don t work and steve is right, if the president really is in a bind and the chairman of the economic advisors, austan goolsbee game out and his expectation as well. the great recession was bigger than we thought. no, the reason we re having such a stall in growth is because we ve overburdened the productive sector of our economy, which is the private sector, businesses don t know what tax and regulatory policies are going to come after them. what the epa is going to do. and they are too scared to invest. consumers are too scared to spend. and then you have the president, you know, coming out with rhetoric, that is, you know, very damaging, attacking what do you mean, demonizing bankers. demonizing businesses telling companies i might raise your taxes if you make a
natural disaster. are we headed for a double dip? boy, i sure hope not. but these signs, just what happened the last few weeks, you ve had more companies, paul, as you know, laying off workers, major companies like sisco, nobody s hiring right now. the housing market stinks. consumers aren t spending, so you just wonder where the job growth is going to come from. and obama is in a bit of a vice here right now. because they spent the 800 billion dollars in 2009 and 2010 to prop up the economy, and you ve got a little bump up in the economy from that and now the debt is so big, you can t continue to borrow, so i think that keynesian economics have run its course. paul: they have thrown every part of the keynesian arsenal at this, near zero it rates for two and a half years, cash for clunkers, mortgage policy, housing tax credits and here we are under
european debt crisis pops up again or you get another big natural disaster. are we headed for a double dip? boy, i sure hope not. but these signs, just what happened the last few weeks, you ve had more companies, paul, as you know, laying off workers, major companies like sisco, nobody s hiring right now. the housing market stinks. consumers aren t spending, so you just wonder where the job growth is going to come from. and obama is in a bit of a vice here right now. because they spent the 800 billion dollars in 2009 and 2010 to prop up the economy, and you ve got a little bump up in the economy from that and now the debt is so big, you can t continue to borrow, so i think that keynesian economics have run its course. paul: they have thrown every part of the keynesian arsenal at this, near zero it rates for two and a half years, cash for clunkers, mortgage policy, housing tax
if we had stable prices. we had stable demand. if something had gone right with housing. but nothing has gone right. with all of these 30 billion dollars of housing tax credits, not including possibly the fraud. it is amazing. neil: when you take the credit away. o , the buyers go away. so we are borrowing for future we did nothing. whoever would have bought maybe next april, bought in april or which ever year we re referring to. we merely borrowed from the future. demand dropped. prices continued to drop. absolutely nothing was accomplished by the home buyer tax credit as far as i m concerned. neil: do you think people have a past loafian response to like a pavlovian response? i m not sure. maybe they will buy a home. maybe they were going to buy any way. i think we have to leave it