Obama’s Unpopular Stimulus Won’t Be the Last

In Monday’s Financial Times, Ed Luce, one of the most astute Washington columnists, made the argument that President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, despite its evident success in preventing an economic cataclysm, might well mark the end of Keynesian stimulus policies, at least on this side of the Atlantic. “On political grounds, the largest fiscal stimulus in history is close to being toxic,” Luce wrote. And he went on: “The Keynesian Humpty Dumpty was shattered the day Mr. Obama’s stimulus was enacted. It is very hard to see how it will be put back together again…. Keynesianism has been supplanted by Austerianism.”

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