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0 pointssteveBK1231y ago0 comments

Two huge factors, agreed.

US did bailouts & stimulus, and now compared to COVID arguably far too little stimulus for partisan reasons. Meanwhile the EU was implementing austerity due partially to Germans incessant inflation fears.

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tharmas1y ago· 1 in thread

Yes. Bernanke was a keen student of the Great Depression of the 1930s. He argued that a big part of that problem was the lack of money supply. So he did QE (a term coined by Prof Richard Werner, by the way). The only problem was too much of that money ended up in purchasing assets rather than being invested in productive capacities. Hence the asset price inflation we have today.

Tory Austerity has absolutely decimated the UK. George Osbourne should be pilloried as being the main architect of its demise. Ideology is a pernicious disease.

steveBK123OP1y ago

The monetary side could only do so much and the fiscal side didn’t pull its weight.

For better or worse, having a GOP president during COVID lead to more stimulus as the Dems will play along and just add some pro labor addendums.

Having Obama in the WH he mostly dealt with nonstop GOP attempts to block any fiscal aid. Not to mention the huge focus on Obamacare by Dems took the eye off the ball.

US came out of GFC better than most but we still could have gotten out of it 2x faster.

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