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Today’s post on economic stimulusToday

I’m not an economist, I’m not even kind of an economist. But there are a lot of other people out there who are not economists who have a lot to say about the economic stimulus, and some of what they’re saying leads me to some questions. Oh how I wish I could demand that a real economist answer them.

People are saying that Obama’s stimulus plan is too small. For example, here’s John Judis:

There’s much to like in Obama’s plan. But there are two important ways he may have to go further. Most economists agree that what finally pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression was military spending for World War II. Some liberals argue that if the Roosevelt administration had not abandoned a Keynesian stimulus strategy in 1937-38, the U.S. might have gotten out of the depression without a war. But in 1936, unemployment was still at 16.9 percent; by 1942, after two years of war spending, it was 4.7 percent, strongly indicating that it was war spending that did it. I am not suggesting that the United States start a world war in order to solve the world’s economic problem. But I am suggesting a strategy that could be called the fiscal equivalent of war.

So let’s talk about fiscal stimulus a little bit. For at least the past decade, the US (and world) economy has grown due to one factor — the rise in housing pri

Graduating during a recessionToday

What I learned today: graduating from college and entering the workforce during a recession can have a lifelong negative impact on your earnings.

Defining KeynsianismToday

These days we’re hearing a lot about John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who’s one of the few that most people know by name. He’s most commonly associated with the “broken windows” theory and the economic policy of the great depression era. Martin Wolf has a great column on the lessons Keynes offers in the current crisis. I don’t know a whole lot about Keynes, but I absolutely love this paragraph:

Keynes’s genius – a very English one – was to insist we should approach an economic system not as a morality play but as a technical challenge. He wished to preserve as much liberty as possible, while recognising that the minimum state was unacceptable to a democratic society with an urbanised economy. He wished to preserve a market economy, without believing that laisser faire makes everything for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

That sounds just about perfect to me.

The New York Times’ Congress APIYesterday

The New York Times has released a new, free Web service that developers can use to create applications that track how Congress members vote. Join me in offering kudos to the New York Times and in wondering why this service isn’t provided by the government itself.

If I were named CTO of the United States government, I’d require that all new public-facing government applications expose Web services, and that internal developers use those services to build their own applications, thus insuring that those Web services remain useful and up to date. It would both improve transparency and probably increase the quality of the applications offered by the government.

Getting ready for the BCS championshipYesterday

First, ignore the fact that the BCS Championship can in no way be regarded as an actual national championship. Then go read Smart Football’s collection of posts related to the teams in the championship. If you want to understand football more deeply, it’s the best resource out there.