lunedì, febbraio 23, 2009

100% d'accordo

Se proprio dobbiamo divenare keynesiani, meglio farlo con stile: anche qui si è d'accordo con Jeffrey Sachs.


"Greg Mankiw points us to this article by Sachs, excerpt:
President Barack Obama’s economic team is now calling for an unprecedented stimulus of large budget deficits and zero interest rates to counteract the recession. These policies may work in the short term but they threaten to produce still greater crises within a few years. Our recovery will be faster if short-term policies are put within a medium-term framework in which the budget credibly comes back to balance and interest rates come back to moderate sustainable levels....
We need to avoid reckless short-term swings in policy. Massive deficits and zero interest rates might temporarily perk up spending but at the risk of a collapsing currency, loss of confidence in the government and growing anxieties about the government’s ability to pay its debts. That outcome could frustrate rather than speed the recovery of private consumption and investment. Deficit spending in a recession makes sense, but the deficits should remain limited (less than 5 percent of GNP) and our interest rates should be kept far enough above zero to avoid wild future swings."


Il problema è purtroppo quello evidenziato in un coommentoa margine: Sachs è diventato ragionevole, proprio mentre il suo obbiettivo - Larry Summers, eminenza grigia del team di Obama - sta diventando più sbiellato di Paul Krugman. Il panico annebbia la vista anche dei migliori .

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution

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