El mito del estancamiento secular

Aug 28, 2018 Joseph E. Stiglitz

NUEVA YORK – Tras la crisis financiera de 2008, algunos economistas sostuvieron que Estados Unidos (y acaso la economía mundial) padecían “estancamiento secular”, una idea que se originó después de la Gran Depresión. Las economías siempre se habían recuperado de sus caídas, pero la Gran Depresión tuvo una duración inédita. Muchos creyeron que la recuperación no hubiera sido posible sin el gasto público de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y temían que al terminar la guerra la economía volvería a estancarse.

Se pensaba que había sucedido algo por lo cual, incluso con tipos de interés bajos o nulos, la economía seguiría paralizada. Felizmente estas aciagas predicciones resultaron erradas, por razones que ahora comprendemos bien.

A los responsables de manejar la recuperación de la crisis de 2008 (las mismas personas culpables de la subregulación de la economía en los días previos a la crisis, a quienes inexplicablemente el presidente Barack Obama acudió para que arreglaran lo que habían ayudado a desarreglar) la idea de estancamiento secular les pareció atractiva, porque explicaba su incapacidad de lograr una recuperación rápida y sostenida. Por eso, mientras la economía languidecía, revivieron la idea, insinuando que ellos no tenían la culpa, porque hacían lo que podían.

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Joseph E. Stiglitz

Writing for PS since 2001
290 Commentaries

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, is a former chief economist of the World Bank (1997-2000) and chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers, was lead author of the 1995 IPCC Climate Assessment, and co-chaired the international High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 51 Comments on this article

gaurav Bhati Sep 11, 2018

By arguing that tax cuts led to full employment, aren't you inadvertently lending support to the idea of trickle-down economics? Would the US not have achieved full employment without tax cuts?
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nigel southway Sep 8, 2018

Another one of these articles about if the glass is half full or half empty.... the solution ….if we cannot fill the glass make it smaller!
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Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 5, 2018

"The fallout from the financial crisis was more severe, and massive redistribution of income and wealth toward the top had weakened aggregate demand......."

How stupid does a polity have to be not to realise that if consumers are cash constrained, and fearful for the future , aggregate demand will be reduced?......probably in direct proportion to the level of the constraint and the fear.

".....The economy was experiencing a transition from manufacturing to services, and market economies don’t manage such transitions well on their own."

Some would maybe wish to point out that what market economies CAN manage on their own is about zilch. Market economies cannot work effectively without the social and physical infrastructure which the State provides.

When we come to terms with what I conclude must be a 'fact' (if such a thing as a fact can be identified in the field of political economy) we may eventually see some progress in human affairs.
- ron smith Sep 17, 2018
  
  Whether or not a polity is "stupid", if it is not sufficiently invested in the outcome to read, to learn and to vote, is intelligence (or lack thereof) really the main problem?
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Renard Nelson Sep 3, 2018

Somewhat surprised you'd view the Obama administration as culpable for not pursuing a larger, bolder, package from a congress that constantly worked to undermine his agenda. Even with a Democratic majority, McConnell & the GOP were intent on making it appear that the fiscal stimulus the administration was able to pull together was akin to welfare (of sorts)... Democrats were, in my view; more culpable for their lack of a killer approach (as we've seen Republicans in the era of Trump).
- Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 5, 2018
  
  Yes, but as you say he failed utterly to get useful policy past, or through, congress. Are we to let that failure count as a success then ?
  
  I'd say Obama's presidency was disastrous, but I don't say that was his intention.
  
  The road to Hell, they say, is paved with 'good intentions'.
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Manu Oquendo Sep 3, 2018

Mr. Stiglitz, with all due respect, should consider freeing himself from ideology. This article fails to address very deep issues with economics, dismal "science", which the global and social power system is unable to recognize.
- Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 5, 2018
  
  Mr Stiglitz is one of many academic and non academic 'economists' who are struggling to identify just why economics is so utterly dismal and almost totally devoid of 'science'.
  
  Concentration on symptoms to the exclusion of underlying causes means we may do well to ignore the bulk of their somewhat esoteric pontifications.
  
  I'd say Jo Stiglitz is doing rather better than most, but his is still isn't a riveting or particularly enlightening contribution. He butters few parsnips, but some of his colleagues butter non at all.
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Gary Stegen Sep 2, 2018

This article is strange to say the least. The terminology is backwards, i.e. "secular stagnation" is a result, not a cause. Symptoms of stagnation include high unemployment and underemployment, economy producing at less than potential, and economic growth below potential. Secular stagnation simply means long term or persistent stagnation, regardless of the causes. There is a long list of potential contributors to secular stagnation and also a long list of potential ways to reduce it. The author has chosen to focus on a few options out of the long list, e.g. increased fiscal stimulus (in 2009) and income redistribution or reduction of income inequality. Why not include some favored by the right wing, such as increasing investment spending by improving the expected profitability of prospective investments or by reducing the risk or restraints on investment spending related to regulations etc. Or why not include some favored by Trump such as increasing US based production and investment by increasing the effective market prices of goods that are currently depressed by low priced or subsidized imports (thus increasing the profitability of US based production and investments). When "economists" present one sided arguments with no balance or perspective they become nothing more than political hacks and lose all credibility.
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joel bernard Sep 2, 2018

This column is really a critique of neo-liberal economists, e.g. Larry Summers and other of President Obama's advisors, who tried to justify the slow effects of the inadequate stimulus. I agree with almost all of it except the headline. Secular stagnation is indeed a plausible account of what is happening in all developed economies since the late 1970s. It's just insufficiently specific about what is stagnating. The global economic story of the past 50 years is the rise of the Asian middle class, and the resulting stagnation of American, more recently European, incomes.

One might ask Stieglitz how policies that (optimistically) "boosted growth to around 4% and brought unemployment down to a 18-year low" can also be described as encouraging (pessimistically) "growth fetishism – especially when we think of the environmental costs, and even more so if that growth fails to bring much benefit to the vast majority of citizens." One answer is that in an increasingly unequal, financialized economy, "even if GDP increases, the incomes of the majority of citizens will stagnate." There it is: stagnation!

If GDP growth is fundamentally a poor measure of increasing social welfare, the challenges of policy ought to be pursuing activist policies of income redistribution to counter the inevitable stagnation of secular median per capita GDP in the developed West.
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Ben Leet Sep 2, 2018

In France the lower-earning 50% grew their income at the same rate of France's economic growth, between 1980-2014, states the Washington Center on Equitable Growth (see Tale of Two Countries at equitablegrowth.org), and now France's lower 50% have incomes higher than the U.S.'s lower 50%, even though the French economy is a third less productive per capita than the U.S. -- Meaning that the U.S. stagnation of income during 1980-2014 was not inevitable, and globalization forces did not stop the French from managing their economy so that all income levels grew. In the U.S. the non-supervisory workers "average weekly earnings" are lower today than they were in 1964, says "data BLS" (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Fifty-four years ago the average weekly and yearly income of the 80% who are non-supervisory was higher, just barely. And in those 54 years the Bureau of Economic Analysis says the per capita disposable income tripled, from around $14,000 to over $42,000. I can hardly imagine a worse record. Probably private banking should be abolished in the U.S., and let the government run it as a public utility. Sanders has proposed a surtax of 50% on personal incomes above $1 million, and maybe there should be a surtax on corporate earnings uninvested in fixed assets, research, expansion of facilities (not intellectual property) or pay raises. Michael Roberts has an important news analysis, he's the Marxian economist in Great Britain. He supports these positions, as I do. My blog, Economics Without Greed, http://benL8.blogspot.com
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Elizabeth Pula Sep 2, 2018

The pay freeze should've been a federal policy to limit wage raises and "entitlements" to Congress, President, and family members.
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Elizabeth Pula Sep 2, 2018

Isn't the real lesson, one about irony? With all the political nonsense being tossed around and being discussed, absolutely no pundit tosses out how AI can be effectively used to replace 99% of all the political positions worldwide. Why would that be? I'd say a major reason is the ones, who are getting inflated wages for doing basically nothing other than run-for-election, want to keep the money revenues coming only to their pockets. How soon can the tide turn?
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Elizabeth Pula Sep 2, 2018

Wasn't it more like, what was proposed "to and for" Obama? The "by whom" is probably the real important part. The banks weren't put in the hospital, they're in the nursery, and in the playground. They are having a field day with the hospitals. The banks and the hospitals are putting 99% of the US citizens into the poor-house. The banks, hospital, and politicians are laughing all the way while they play tug-of-war, from the left and the right. The ones that are the unidentifiable-behind-the-scenes bullies are the captains of the front men, the ones like Obama and Trump.
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Elizabeth Pula Sep 2, 2018

"Don't blame us, its promoters implied"..... What they were really doing was promoting a message to beguile the public to mis-understand, that the promoters were only "fixing" what they had deliberately broken. They had deliberately developed an economic system to limit and control "aggregate demand". Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your sense of humor, the "fix" is back-firing on the very "fixers" due to their own ignorance. Stupidity is really the better word, but I am trying to be civil and kinda nice. It is a Sunday, after all.
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Allan Gross Sep 2, 2018

Finally a column from Stiglitz that I can at least partially agree with despite his continued clear animus to the President. The author is tortured by his being forced to confront the truth of the current economic picture. His future apprehensions are conjecture and given his past record of prediction he does not inspire confidence in their being on point. I quote from his article...

"The sudden increase in the US deficit, from around 3% to almost 6% of GDP, owing to a poorly designed regressive tax bill and a bipartisan expenditure increase, has boosted growth to around 4% and brought unemployment down to a 18-year low. These measures may be ill-conceived, but they show that with enough fiscal support, full employment can be attained, even as interest rates rise well above zero".

"poorly designed", "boosted growth to around 4%", "brought unemployment down to a 18 year low", "measures may be ill-conceived", " etc. If ill conceived and poorly designed policies can boost growth to around 4% and bring unemployment down to an 18 year low I say GIVE ME MORE!
- Kimpton Bradford Sep 3, 2018
  
  You cannot have more!
  Trump and the criminals in his orbit have maximized their personal take from a functional economy brought about by, admittedly "poorly designed" policies from the earlier administration.
  - nigel southway Sep 10, 2018
    
    Look. At least Trump is taking action more than those prior
    His plans will reverse the poor direction of globalization that will force trade balance and improve all forms of pollution
    If you want the logic I will give it but so far your comments have not shown much of anything worth discussing
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- Barry Rosenfeld Sep 2, 2018
  
  One hopes that you weren't one of those deficit hawks who refused adequate stimulus when needed, e.g., when the U Rate was 10%, and who believed that any increase in the federal deficit was a one way ticket to perdition. Suddenly, a deficit of 6% of GDP is a cause for celebration. Too bad you didn't support Stiglitz and others who proposed a serious deficit increase when the economy needed it, but rather thought that the Summers advice to Obama was more than adequate.
  
  Just because the bathtub is overflowing now, don't think that there will be no shortage in the near future. IF interest rates approach historical norms, debt charges might outstrip defense spending as the second highest component of federal spending. Then the fun will begin as the fight between "guns and butter" becomes the defining issue.
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Waleed Addas Sep 2, 2018

But Joseph the challenge will still remain: you know too well that politicians are not economists or highly learned moral individuals, and as such 'flawed economic policies' will continue to be the norm rather than the exception -- and at global level. Unfortunately, the concept of "stagnation" will continue to define US and other regional politics unless some very serious legal revisions are made by the people on the quality and eligibility of their future leaders...
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nigel southway Sep 2, 2018

It looks like Stiglitz has lost the plot…. Certainly, based on his recent articles that ramble through old and out of context concepts and his obsession with knocking Trump.

In this article he fails to mention the effect of out of control globalization (International trade increased 8 fold since 1980) on the stability of the western economies such that fiscal stimulus just gets dissipated to foreign sources via imports rather than jobs and recovery.

It’s another lesson that the economists of the day have not adjusted their theories to include globalization… TRUMP appears to be the only leader that gets it and has reacted correctly to the problem.

It remains to be seen if the religious fanaticism with free trade and multilateralism can be shaken off by the rest and get back to some solid more productive and easier to manage nationalism.
- Kimpton Bradford Sep 3, 2018
  
  Trump is a moron.
  Globalization is and was a project begun and supported by your conservatives and republickans.
  - nigel southway Sep 3, 2018
    
    Globalization was embraced by all sides before Trump...I don’t think Trump is like any other President.. he makes promises he keeps, and works hard at that, unlike his predecessor who talked a lot …but dd nothing…
    If you find Trump a bit hard to take then it could have been a whole lot worse and we could have had another Clinton in the white house.. far from good …. Or it could have been really worse, and you could have a President like our PM in Canada Justin (the pussy) Trudeau....
    - Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 5, 2018
      
      I have some sympathy with your assessment of Trump vs other previous utterly useless incumbents of the White House.
      
      Mostly they do no more than rearrange a few deckchairs. Trump is at least kicking a few over. I think overall he will be little more successful in changing the direction of the 'Deep State' Titanic.
      
      Most of his campaign promises have already been eviscerated and/or neutralised.
      
      And I share your skepicism about more of the Clinton dynasty exuding more of their brand of poison on the world as offering any better prescription.
      - nigel southway Sep 8, 2018
        
        Whatever happens he has set some issues into public discourse that others may follow later… we hope...… it does show true leadership instead of following the heard.
        
        Many of us silently agree with his direction and that’s his advantage…
        
        His disadvantage is the liberal democracy driven media and many globalized multilateralists that cannot see that his changes are important and would rather create a waste of press and waste his energy on topics that do nothing for us. ...such as this fixation on Russia and his inability to maintain political correctness and his use of from the chin social media comments gains him silent support but creates a spin in the media.. not sure if its good or bad… but he has made politics interesting... … which to many is also his appeal…...
        He is also a fighter and does not back down easy… lets hope his enemies do not get an unfair grip on him.
        
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- Robert O'Regan Sep 2, 2018
  
  Reminds me of Eisenhower saying "old soldiers never die, they just fade away."
  - Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 5, 2018
    
    Old academics never die, they just lose their faculties.
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John Alexander Sep 2, 2018

"[T]here is nothing that inherently prevents our economy from being run in a way that ensures full employment and shared prosperity." I agree without reservation, not because I might be an accomplished economist, or because I might be infallible, but simply because I believe deeply that no tax should be other than progressive. Taxation in its modern, largely regressive form is part of the machinery by which capital is conveyed upward to the already powerful, and will be largely responsible for the extinction of humanity if global warming conduces to such event.
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tstreithorst Sep 2, 2018

I don't mean to tell a Nobel Prize winner he should reread Alvin Hansen's 1938 speech but I don't think he understands secular stagnation. In simplest terms, secular stagnation occurs when private sector desire to save exceeds desire to invest. The solution, I think we both agree, is for the government to become the investor of last resort.
- nigel southway Sep 8, 2018
  
  Go ahead question them…. It’s not difficult... these economists have no logic worth following ..they have become too politically motivated...
  
  Yes... you are correct.. the average joe is not investing not because he does not want to do so, but he just cannot afford to do it as his wages have been flat and his cost of basic living is too high..plus a growing view that the return is just not there.. via low interest rates as its spend rather than save orientated….
  
  I also hate the Nobel prize for economists. it’s supposed to be for scientists (Economic is NOT a science) that do good for mankind. name any economist outside of maybe Keynes that have done that.
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shayre Sep 2, 2018

The errors and recommendations of what should have been done in 2009 are the right solutions AFTER globalization is no longer a win-win for the U.S. and China, and therefore comes to an end, BUT, in 2009, the policies implemented were correct, because they forced China's hand into fueling their own debt bubble to an incredible level. The U.S. was able to recover based on China's fiscal stimulus more than its own.

So, this is the story that must be sold to the masses today (with globalization now coming to an end).

To believe that this has not been understood since the time of Keynes is naive at best.

The reality is, it was just not pragmatic to implement these ideas until such time that all the benefits of hegemony, and being a printer of the world's reserve currency, had come to an end. Until then, neoliberalism was the most pragmatic option to convince the citizens of the developed world to desire (Reagan and Thatcher's winning pitch to the people). Those responsible for manufacturing the needed consent fully understood this reality.

The last kick at the can for the developed world was going to be the China-driven globalization that began in the 80s. The U.S. has ridden this wave about as brilliantly as it possibly could have (the central bank, and the fiscal policies implemented, regardless of which party was in power, as hard as it is to believe, did an amazing job, for Americans, even though it may not feel like it right now). It was better to let the wealth become concentrated in American hands versus letting it leak out. Wealth in American hands can be taxed back easily enough. Wealth in the hands of non-Americans can only be taken back by providing goods and services in return. By limiting the leakage, the developed world prolonged the benefits that accrued to it for as long as humanly possible.

When globalization comes to an end (no longer a win-win for the U.S. and China), these are going to be the policies implemented by developed-world countries. Some are already more along the path than others. The relationship that existed between the developed world and China will now exist between China and the developing world (especially Africa).

Why it's important for Trump to continue to run huge deficits right now is because it will justify raising minimum wages and wages in general (and wages are sticky, and therefore, less likely to fall when things eventually are allowed to become a little less inflationary). Again, this is the right policy to set up the proper fundamentals for a post-globalization reality (for the developed world). It will also justify the trillion-dollar deficits that the Democrats continue to run after 2020, but with a shift from military spending towards more progressive policies aimed at raising income, healthcare of, and education achievements of the 90%.
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Emilio Zuniga Sep 2, 2018

Dr. Stiglitz ignores that most economists agreed with a more powerfull fiscal policy at the time. That was opposed by the Reps in Congress. As a result the unconventional monetary policy of QE came to support growth. Again the Rep opposed but they do not control the FED and we had a week recovery. It is in this context that the thought of secular stagnation was revived. That is in light of polítical opposition to a strong fiscal policy by the Congress , the US economy faced the secular stagnation scenario. Trump changed the game when he proposed to increase the fiscal deficit by cuting taxes. As most economist expect, that will be a short term boost to grow but a long term failure.
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E. Swanson Aug 31, 2018

Joseph Stiglitz wrote: "...there is nothing that inherently prevents our economy from being run in a way that ensures full employment and shared prosperity. "

Actually, there are real limits to growth. The developed economies depend on fossil fuels, which are by definition, not sustainable sources of energy. The U.S. experienced the effects of global problems in oil supply in 1973, 1979 and again in 2008 when world oil prices spiked. We temporarily enjoy a surplus due to new extraction techniques, but these techniques only increase the rate of depletion of known resources. Fracked wells produce high flow rates initially, but there's a steep decline in production as the wells deplete rapidly.

Furthermore, given that U.S. and global population continues to climb, the per capita amount of those fossil fuel resources, particularly oil, is steadily declining. Added to these problems is the Greenhouse Effect, which is already causing the world's climate to change. Some scientists have claimed that the world's economies must essentially stop all burning of carbon fuels in the immediate future if serious changes to climate are to be avoided. The twin problems of resource depletion and climate change imply that the entire world economy must be completely rebuilt with fundamentally different energy sources, a prospect which appears impossible, given current political and economic constraints.

Sorry folks, continued exponential growth on a finite planet is a path to certain disaster...
- John Alexander Sep 8, 2018
  
  "Actually, there are real limits to growth." Yes, of course there are, but nowhere in this article does Stiglitz say otherwise. His concern is with now, with the present, perhaps implicitly with the survival of civilization. He is not seeking to endorse the superstition according to which economic growth is the answer to everything.
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Robert Wolff Aug 31, 2018

I believe there are more profound underlying factors in the slow recovery that allowed Trump to capture the Presidency to take responsibility for the holistic national economy. Free market advocates believe the US economy works without national level stewards of the holistic economy, but that was based on Greenspan's mistaken belief that individual institutional leaders were responsible to and for the institutions they led. Greenspan admitted his mistake in 2008.
The truth is that US institutions are at war among themselves for money and power, and see their own institutional wins as necessarily ameliorating the power of other US institutions. Thus, the crux of the problem is a lack of unified support among institutional leaders for survival and health of the holistic national economy. For example, Wall Street international banks are at war with Washington anti-globalists who want an America First policy in economic expansion and debt recovery that serves Americans as a whole.
The anti-patriotic globalists got what they deserved in Trump, who is the only politician in Washington who says the economic growth of the nation as a whole is more important than who wins the inter-institutional wars for money and power over those other US institutions who are competing with them for money and political power.
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Brian T Aug 31, 2018

I just heard that Sir James Mirrlees has died, with an obituary in the FT: https://www.ft.com/content/9782dc2a-ac5c-11e8-89a1-e5de165fa619 . Mirrlees was a pioneer in the study of asymmetric information, for which he is a Nobel laureate (1996), and a mentor to Prof. Stiglitz and may others.
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Per Kurowski Aug 29, 2018

Regulators distorted credit with risk weighted capital requirements for banks based on perceived risk of assets, and not on the risks of how those assets are perceived (the conditional probabilities), and Stiglitz calls that “under-regulation of the economy”?
http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2016/04/here-are-17-reasons-for-why-i-believe.html
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ian.pharmacist Aug 29, 2018

Totally disagree with this. In 1920 Warren Harding faced a sudden collapse in the US economy but he did nothing (mainly due to the fact he had a stroke and his wife was running things).GDP collapsed 12% but within 18 months we had the "roaring twenties". This Keynesian view of things is just a fantasy. You cannot print demand but you can print bubbles and now have a bubble in bonds, stocks, tech and real estate thanks to QE and ZIRP. Many thanks Joseph!
- Barry Rosenfeld Sep 2, 2018
  
  Try not to confuse Harding with Wilson. Harding did not become POTUS until March 4, 1921. Then there was Tea Pot Dome, etc., and he followed Wilson.
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Sergio Paradiz Aug 29, 2018

I belong to the group of those disappointed by Stiglitz’s blindness by ideology. And this article proves oves again. When he writes”crucial mistake in 2009 in not pursuing a larger, longer, better-structured, and more flexible fiscal stimulus. Had it done so, the economy’s rebound would have been stronger, and there would have been no talk of secular stagnation” he ignores he was a critic of the Fed policy at the time.
Stiglitz answer to :”Will growth rates in coming years be as strong as they were in the past?” Is : “ That, of course, depends on the pace of technological change”. I’m lost. First claiming that secular stagnation was due to poor government policies, it now seems there are other factors that can influence growth which are beyond government intervention. Of course anyone reading this articles understands this is only another opportunity for Stiglitz to have a go at Trump. But there are so many vulnerabilities in Trump’s policies that it is counterproductive to use this type of rhetoric.
- Robert O'Regan Sep 2, 2018
  
  I suggest that your last sentence is a bit of an undocumented cheap shot at Trump as well.
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- Anony Mous Aug 30, 2018
  
  Please note that Dr. Stiglitz referred to fiscal, not monetary, stimulus. His critique of Fed Policy is entirely consistent with his desire for greater fiscal stimulus.
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vivek iyer Aug 29, 2018

The problem with this view is that the economists who, in a cavalier manner, invoked 'secular stagnation'- people like Krugman & Summers- experienced a precipitous decline in credibility during the period. Of course, the same could be said of the author.

What is the point of an Economist, as opposed to a Minister of Religion, saying 'the economy will always be evil till everybody becomes good and farsighted and loving and nice'?
That is what Stiglitz is doing here. This once great economist writes- 'Unless and until the selfishness and myopia that define our politics is overcome, an economy that serves the many, rather than the few, will remain an impossible dream'. If people weren't selfish and myopic we wouldn't need an economy. Everybody would work to the best of their ability and render unto others as much as they might need.
Myopia is a good thing if the fog of Knightian Uncertainty prevails. Selfishness is a good thing if information asymmetry obtains. Economics is a worthwhile field of study only under these two conditions.

The income of the majority of citizens everywhere will always stagnate unless the majority is hell bent on improving its income and exits or causes others to exit or, in any case, prevents entry into the biggest labour markets.

A Gandhian India where everybody is unselfish and so long-sighted as to see through the delusion of materialistic affluence is one where the majority of citizens experience falling real income. In 1964, the diminutive Gandhian P.M of India was telling Indians to skip a meal while begging for PL480 shipments to feed a nation of farmers! As the late VS Naipaul noted, Indians got shorter, had less stamina and lower I.Q because of chronic malnutrition under 'Gandhian Socialism'. BTW, India had superb mathematical economists and received advice from the top econometricians of the time.

Stiglitz is right to say that those lazy pundits who lazily invoked secular stagnation were lazy and stupid- but everybody already knows this. When was the last time Krugman got any prediction right? What's was the last sensible thing he said? Would any country be crazy enough to invite Summers to help reorganise their economy?

Is Stiglitz correct to say Obama should have adopted an expansionary fiscal policy? No. The man tried and backed down when he saw that the initiatives he backed had a negative rate of return. They were distorting R&D priorities. They increased global vulnerability to craziness in the MENA region. Fracking, by contrast, proved an effective tool against that craziness. It could have been better managed- but not by the Government. An expansionary Keynesian policy depends on the Govts. capacity to make sensible investments. It was glaringly lacking in some New Deal programs of the Thirties and things have actually got worse since then. Bureaucrats have gotten stupider, not smarter.

So long as geriatric views of the economy prevail, it is a good thing if there is a pro-cyclical policy so that there can be a swifter, sharper, shock and shakeout for the real economy. So long as certain essentially mischievous asset classes, which are the equivalent of cocaine to Wall Street, are also decimated, this yields a better economy than taking Keynesian medicine in bad times and ending up addicted to Oxy.
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Jerry hough Aug 28, 2018

I read this with a feeling of exhilaration. First, I agree with it, but more important, an old hero of mine is returning to his serious work, not anti-Trump ranting. And some day he may even mention that it is Trump who has adopted fiscal stimulus.

What I would like to see is more of an analysis of another aspect of Trump's program. Obama-Citigroup kept zero interest rates--really negative interest rates-- for an enormous length of time. It became conventional wisdom that it hyped stock prices with things like buying back stocks and M & A and came to have almost no effect on the economy,

Trump's team not only consciously provided a fiscal stimulus, but is normalizing interest rates. What is the interaction? Is the fiscal stimulus a substitute to prevent the normalization from being a drag? What happens when the 10-year
year hits 4-5% with relatively tame inflation? What, if anything, should be done with all the bought-back bonds or was that just a fiction?

I hope Stiglitz will move to an analysis of this interaction and to question, what should be done? What ensures that more goes to raise real wages and reduce inegalitarianism? Replacement of social security taxes with a VAT? Change the supply-demand relationship in labor by a sharp reduction in immigration and outsourcing?
- Paul Friesen Aug 30, 2018
  
  Stimulus is required when there is a lack of demand. When the economy is booming, it's time to pay down the debt in preparation for the next time we need stimulus. Running constant deficits is the way economies get into long-term trouble (especially if they have been borrowing in foreign currency.)
  - Oeufs Bruns Sep 2, 2018
    
    Pay down US sovereign debt by any significant amount and a depression will follow. Each and every time.
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Jose Antonio Vanderhorst Silverio Aug 28, 2018

I wanted to write a comment under the Joseph E. Stiglish’s Jul 30, 2018, article “The US is at Risk of Losing a Trade War with China,” but it had to many comments already. That has been my experience with the great majority of articles that attract me, for example, in Spain’s EL País newspaper, which translated it as "EE UU y la guerra comercial," with the subtititle "Trump tiene un problema, pero no es con China. Está en su propia casa: el escaso nivel de ahorro," published by El Pais.

Adding today’s numbers in brackets, next is a translation of my comment that I understand applies here as well: “How weird. The English version of this article currently has 144 [148] comments and this having passed 10 hours has only one [3 with mine]. Will it make sense to say that Stiglitz has a simplistic model of globalization and anti-globalization? Using Ockham's Razor, I have been suggesting an up-to-date global conceptual model that divides globalization into bright and dark, and which calls DeGlobalization what Stiglitz's calls anti-globalization. That changes the current situation in that we are mssing the Bright Globalization to help emerge an institutional innovation, since the world is dominated by obsolete institutions of the Dark Globalization and its reaction with the DeGlobalization.
- Michael Public Aug 29, 2018
  
  I am with you that globalisation needs to be divided into dark and light varieties, as do many other grand concepts bandied around here.
  
  I caution against referencing Occum's Razor as it in essence is a lazy principle - the world is as simple or complex as it factually is, no more, no less - to say that simple explanations are more likely to be true is in no way supportable.
  - Jose Antonio Vanderhorst Silverio Aug 29, 2018
    
    Thank you for trying. Before responding you in the last paragraph, these preliminary are useful to get a better picture. I have responded twice to VIVEK IYER, who has a comment here already. This is part of what I said to him the second time.
    
    My response is based on an emerging vocabulary as a result of using mainly the Heuristic (lessons learned) Methodology of Systems Architecting. If you go a bit deep into my first comment here, you will see that the UN 'Sustainable Development Goals' were developed by consensus under the Simplistic Globalization Model being used by economist of The Wealth of Nations, when they should be developed to help emerge institutional innovations under the Updated Global Conceptual Model of The Wealth of Globalization.
    
    In one of your very valuable comments, on Aug 23, 2018, you wrote that ” In this field, as elsewhere, 'the best' is the enemy of 'the good' and talk of morality is the enemy of ethical pragmatics.” Next I repeat my selective response to you under that article where I only wrote one comment.
    
    In the third paragraph of my comment, which you can consider as a thought experiment, I wrote “This time I am questioning if the EcoNoMy science that centers its attention on The Wealth of Nations, might need to help emerge the EcoIsOurs profession, like Engineering has grown into Systems Architecting, to center the attention into The [W]ealth of Globalization, which give the opposite understanding on the meaning for the heuristic “'the best' is the enemy of 'the good‘.” That opposite understanding to favor ‘the best’ is due to the Computing Big Shift that enables us to approximate to the Third Degree of Clarity given that the Printing Big Shift is limited to the Second Degree of Clarity.
    
    The rule for selection of a framework is simple: the one chosen should have heuristic and learning power. The globalization and anti-globalization framework have no such heuristic and learning power as needed to address wicked problems. The Bright Globalization, Dark Globalization and DeGlobalization has the heuristic power that systems architecting tell us to, like, "simplify, simplify, simplify," which in this case corresponds to "the principle (attributed to William of Occam) that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary.“
    - Elizabeth Pula Sep 5, 2018
      
      good will VS bad will.
      actor+motive= good will VS bad will
      balance of power= survival of the many vs survival of the few
      optimum results = application of common sense
      - Jose Antonio Vanderhorst Silverio Sep 17, 2018
        
        Need to make sure that new common sense of the Bright Globalization under The Wealth of Globalization is not available yet. We only have the obsolete common sense of the Dark Globalization and the DeGlobalization under The Wealth of Nations.
        
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