re: #180 Justanotherhuman

And so much of that happened during Republican administrations—the mini-depression started in Dec 2007 and culminated in the TARP—Bush was not going to allow the criminal activity under his watch to destroy the economy totally, I suppose. Obama didn’t have much choice but to follow through because it was already in motion and they knew he was going to win the election. It would have been unprecedented to allow more banks to fail after TARP was passed.

However, if Pres Obama had not pushed for a stimulus program, we would have gone full blown into a depression, regardless of TARP, I think.

And that put us where we are today, recovering slowly, but surely, and people themselves being far more cautious about credit. Unfortunately, it also means that we have developed an underclass that will probably never be employed again or will continue to be underemployed—victims of those policies that got us to this point.

This is the sort of situation that would benefit greatly from a massive infrastructure program, getting much-needed work done while putting people back to work in careers which would impart valuable training and experience, while also putting money back into the economy. Instead, we’re locked into this insanity where, instead of arguing over whether austerity is needed in the midst of a recovery, we’re arguing over how much austerity we should impose. Great example being the argument over food stamps in the farm bill, with the two positions not one of massive cuts on one side and continued or increased spending on the other, but rather massive cuts versus small cuts.