> in other words, the proposition that deficits of this
> magnitude are unsustainAble for so long as the economy
> is operating below full capacity, debt service charges
> are at historic lows, and denominatedin a currency which
> enjoys safe haven status even at this deficit to gdp ratio
> in seems to me unproven and more of an ideological construct
> designed to justify spending cuts to social programs.
Maybe I'm just parsing this wrong, but the folks who are ideologically hoping to justify spending cuts to social programs are not the same people who are saying that higher-than-normal deficits are fine until we have a real recovery; further, the wanna-cutters waive a threat of high interest rates and/or hyper-inflation if the deficits continue, which has no basis in economic theory or history.
Doug's take is "well, we can't do this forever" - which no one is suggesting. In fact, we might have already been done with it, and well in the throes of a robust recovery, if the initial stimulus hadn't been suffocated by Larry Summers.
The sooner we start, the sooner we can stop.
/jordan