More ‘stimulus’ stories

Here’s the result of a decade of economic stimulus, as described by Franklin Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. to the House Ways and Means Committee in May 1939:

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.  And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … And an enormous debt to boot!

Here’s the explanation of why what was tried in the States was fortunately not tried elsewhere -- with the result that in the States the depression was both deeper and longer than almost anywhere else.

And here, in pictures, is the whole stimulus approach explained very simply.  It’s good.