Thumbs Down on the "Stimulus" Plan

Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, points out that the Republicans have successfully gutted the "stimulus" plan. He is very depressed about the on-coming recession/depression:

I’ve gone through the CBO numbers a bit more carefully; they’re projecting a $2.9 trillion shortfall over the next three years. There’s just no way $780 billion, much of it used unproductively, will do the job.

Remember: The Republicans object to the "spending" in the stimulus. But that is exactly what economists, real economists, are calling for. As Krugman points out, the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) predicts that the economy will fall $2.9 trillion below its potential. That's a lot of unemployment. Even if the whole $780 billion were real spending in the near future, it won't come near to filling this hole. So the economy will sink and the negative feedback loop of people out of work or fearing to lose their jobs will cut back spending even more which will only drive the economy down more. The Keynesian solution is to spend. But the idiot Republican are against spending. They want "tax cuts" which are mostly saved and not spent, so they don't help fill the growing hole as the economy goes down. The Right is idiotic and it is taking the US down with its idiocy.