Via Greg Mankiw's blog comes a set of slides from Nobel laureate economist Robert Lucas making the case that government policies now are contributing to the slow recovery as they did in the 1930s. "I see analogies to the U.S. of the 1930's," he writes:
- Likelihood of much higher taxes, focused on the "rich"
- Medical legislation that promises large increase in role of government
- Financial legislation that assigns vast, poorly-defined responsibilities to Fed, others
- Are these conditions that foster a revival in business investment, consumer spending?