"Assuming it goes through, the stimulus package will certainly stimulate the economy. The question is whether it will stimulate it enough to offset the deflationary forces elsewhere in the economy. Sixty billion dollars, which is the figure being bandied about for tax cuts and increases in government spending, is a fair amount—and it's only part of the over-all stimulus. Immediately after September 11th, Congress appropriated an extra forty billion dollars, of which about twenty-five billion dollars is already being spent. Then there are the tax cuts that the Bush Administration introduced at the start of this year. If you add all these things together, you get a big number, perhaps equivalent to one and a half or two per cent of the G.D.P. That's the largest fiscal package since the Reagan era, and, moreover, it is being put into effect at the same time that the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates to their lowest levels in forty years."