Outrageous Fiscal Mendacity Is Neither Historically Normal

As An Economics Professor I Am By Nature Inclined To The View That The Truth Isn't Out There, It's In Here - That Usually You Learn A Lot More By Thinking Really Hard About The Data Than You Do By Sniffing Around For Supposedly Inside Information.

People Who Are Complaining About The Fed Are People Who've Been Predicting Runaway Inflation For Five And Six Years, And It Hasn't Happened.

Middle-class Societies Don't Emerge Automatically As An Economy Matures, They Have To Be Created Through Political Action.

In Fact, I'd Say That The Sources Of The Economy's Expansion From 2003 To 2007 Were, In Order, The Housing Bubble, The War, And - Very Much In Third Place - Tax Cuts.

If We Discovered That, You Know, Space Aliens Were Planning To Attack And We Needed A Massive Buildup To Counter The Space Alien Threat And Really Inflation And Budget Deficits Took Secondary Place To That, This Slump Would Be Over In 18 Months. ... There Was A Twilight Zone Episode Like This In Which Scientists Fake An Alien Threat In Order To Achieve World Peace. Well, This Time, We Don't Need It, We Need It In Order To Get Some Fiscal Stimulus.