Fiscal Stimulus, Fiscal Inflation or Fiscal Fallacies?
An analysis of fiscal stimulus. Dropping money from helicopters is “fiscal stimulus,” and that will surely goose demand before it quickly leads to inflation. Usually though, “stimulus” means by debt that the government plans to pay back, and is supposed to work without inflation. Does it? Many arguments reflect classic fallacies. Most of all, the usual arguments imply that our current troubles come from inadequate borrowing and spending! No, our current troubles come instead from a credit crunch, and a “flight to quality” and “precautionary demand” for government debt. Fiscal stimulus could in principle help to quench that demand, but that problem can be more easily and reversibly solved by expanding the Fed and Treasury’s asset purchases.
Update: Paul Krugman and Brad Delong wrote very critical blog posts. However, neither seems to have read past the first few paragraphs. Brad says I think the velocity of money is constant. Keep reading, Brad, down to “A monetary argument for fiscal stimulus..” where it says “if money demand increases dramatically…”. Paul says I treat S=I as an identity, not an equilibrium condition. Keep reading, Paul, down to “aggregate demand has fallen.. deflationary pressure…” where nominal GDP is adjusting to equilibrate S and I. OK, I can’t condense all of macro down to 300 word blog posts, but if you can’t read more than that, don’t write nasty comments. Greg Mankiw and Dani Rodrik had nicer things to say. Greg’s blog is the place to go for intelligent stimulus skepticism. Declan McCullagh of CBS news wrote a nice article collecting many academic stimulus skeptics.