Robert Samuelson on Recovering from Recession
Displaying 7
“Many public policy problems are genuinely hard. How to guarantee job creation? Provide financial stability? Improve inner-city schools? There are no panaceas. By contrast, solutions to the long-term budget imbalance are obvious: cut spending or raise taxes. Given the predictable retirement of baby boomers, it was no secret that promised government benefits would overwhelm the existing tax base. This problem could have been fixed.”
“Two-thirds or more of China's reserves are estimated to be held in dollars. As an economic strategy, dumping the dollar would boomerang. It would amount to a declaration of economic war in which everyone -- Chinese, Americans and many others -- would lose.”
“One insistent question at the start of a new decade involves the lingering effects of the old: What scars will the Great Recession leave?”
“There are risks in overaggressive government job-creation programs that can be sustained only by borrowing or taxes.”
“How close did we come to the Great Depression 2.0?”
“On Labor Day 2009, future jobs are the nation's gigantic question mark.”
“It's not surprising that the much-ballyhooed 'economic stimulus' hasn't done much stimulating.”
