The $787 billion stimulus bill has been signed by President Obama, and the $275 billion help for homeowners has been announced and generally well received, but still the stock markets keep dropping. Worldwide, daily new plans for stimulus and rescue are met with daily declines in stock prices and gloomy economic figures. There’s a reason […]

As the Obama stimulus plan passes and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner unveils the outline of a $1.5 trillion bank rescue package, the die has been definitively cast in favor of the Keynesian stimulus approach to the ongoing unpleasantness. That has been conventional wisdom since the Great Depression, but it’s still worth looking at what might […]

For free market enthusiasts, the Obama administration’s $500,000 remuneration limit for banks receiving public bailouts is less obnoxious than it seems at first. Most obviously, it provides a useful incentive against further recourse to taxpayer funds – even the near-deadbeat Citigroup is not to be subjected to it until it asks for yet more money. […]

Until the House Republican revolt this week, there has been a worldwide consensus that the way to get out of a deep recession is through fiscal “stimulus” – gigantic gobs of public spending that explode the budget deficit but provide jobs to those without them. It’s a theory first publicized by Maynard Keynes, but it […]