Brother, can you spare a dime?

More graphs from Brian DeLong:

Because monetary policy is already tapped out--Treasury interest rates are at zero--and employment losses are about to be bigger than in any previous recession since the Great Depression itself.

Whatever the future will be, we're not going back to the way we were.

And then there's this video:

in response to the usual CSPAN hysterical caller, Rep Kanjorski gives his perspective on the bailout, it is especially interesting to hear how the money market drawdown threatened to collapse the entire world economy in 24 hours back in the fall of 2008, which was the motivation for the first 350 billion.

Pointing fingers:

The revolution was started by Chicago's first convert -- Richard Nixon in 1971. It was carried forward by the Reagan and Clinton administrations. Soon it became more profitable to grow money from money than to grow maize, textiles or steel.

Building up debts and deficits became acceptable. During the Bush-Cheney years the national debt doubled from $5.7 trillion to $10.7 trillion. 'Reagan proved ...deficits don't matter' said Dick Cheney in 2001.

Making money from money became the aim of economic policy. Chicago economists argued that private bankers could be trusted to create and distribute credit. That the US economy could safely be held aloft by a credit-fueled shopping spree. Shopping became the major economic activity.

Today the finance sector grabs more than 30% of domestic corporate profits -- double its share 25 years ago. And fully 75% of US GDP is down to personal consumption expenditures -- up from around 60% in the 1960s.

Today millions are jobless, homeless and hungry.

Then there's Robert Reich at TPM:



Paul Krugman:

Now, House and Senate negotiators have to reconcile their versions of the stimulus, and it’s possible that the final bill will undo the centrists’ worst. And Mr. Obama may be able to come back for a second round. But this was his best chance to get decisive action, and it fell short.

So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.

For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”

No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t.

I think I'm going to go bury some gold in the backyard....