>This reminds me, what do the economists hereabouts think of Larry
>Summers' argument in favor of budgetary austerity -- i.e., that it
>is "reloading the fiscal cannon," as I believe he put it.
Yeah, right. On the phone the other day, Max Sawicky quoted Ron Dellums saying something like in the 60s they told us we couldn't spend because of the war, in the 70s it was inflation, in the 80s it was the deficit.... And now we can't spend because of the surplus! There's always a good reason not to take from the rich and give to the poor; it just takes some imagination to come up with something appropriate to the times.
Doug