Nov

10

A New Deal?

Filed Under Reviews | 2 Comments

Paul Krugman thinks that Mr Obama has the chance of ushering in a FDR-like New Deal for the United States, but he thinks that Obama should be less cautious about his economic policies. He says that the shortcomings of FDRs New Deal, on the short run, was due to the cautiousness of the economic policies he introduced.

…Barack Obama should learn from F.D.R.’s failures as well as from his achievements: the truth is that the New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run as it was in the long run. And the reason for F.D.R.’s limited short-run success, which almost undid his whole program, was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious.

In another paragraph:

The economic lesson is the importance of doing enough. F.D.R. thought he was being prudent by reining in his spending plans; in reality, he was taking big risks with the economy and with his legacy. My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little.

The whole article, at Paul Krugman’s column, is here.

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Jun

2

Update to the Blog

Filed Under News, Trade | 2 Comments

I have just added a roll of the allafrica.com feed on trade news to the blog. It is directly below Recent Comments, at the right hand side. I am also currently reading the book The Least Developed Countries and World Trade, a Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) publication. The study was prepared by Stefan de Vylder. I will let you know what I think of it.

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