Will fiscal responsibilimania cause another Roosevelt Recession?

It’s moving day here at the Combat! blog offices, where certain dismayingly materialistic acquisitions (real mattress) have led us to A) complain that this was much easier last time, when literally everything we owned fit into the bed of a Ford Ranger and B) assume that the economy has recovered. Things must be going well when even people who don’t want stuff have stuff, right? Of course it turns out that things are not so sunny. The US economic metaphor has been upgraded from crash to lingering illness, and while total work hours, productivity and corporate profits are all up, unemployment and the housing market—the two segments of the economy that most pertain to actual people and not Excel files—continue to suck it for coke money. And yet, the hot issue in politics is deficit spending. As the New York Times points out, the international mania for curbing government spending and balancing budgets—which has thus far dominated the G-20 summit, to say nothing of discourse at home—has the potential to trigger another Roosevelt Recession. What the fudge is that, you ask? Looks like someone’s going to have to click on the jump.

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