Some Quotes Worth Posting

"Data worth pondering:
S&P 500 index:
1-20-93: 433.37
1-20-01: 1342.54
1-20-09: 805.22
Latest: 1432.84
Draw your own conclusions."
~Bruce Bartlett, former Reagan economic advisor

"ObamaCare. RomneyDon't." (Seen on a wall.)

"Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better. That is the modus operandi of the leveraged-buyout business, and in an honest free-market economy, there wouldn’t be much scope for it because it creates little of economic value." ~David Stockman, Director of Office of Management and Budget in Reagan White House

"Conservatism's mansion has many rooms, and all of them are padded." Charlie Pierce

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they've been fooled." ~Mark Twain

“What worries me is the idea that we’re in a vicious cycle. Increasing inequality means a weaker economy, which means increasing inequality, which means a weaker economy. That economic inequality feeds into political economy, so the ability to stabilize the economy gets weaker.” ~Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Prize economist

"The traditional third-party mantra, "There's no significant difference between the major parties" amounts to saying: "The Republicans are no worse, overall." And that's absurd. It constitutes shameless apologetics for the Republicans, however unintended. It's crazily divorced from present reality." ~Daniel Ellsberg

"In the eight to twelve close-fought states -- especially Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, but also Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin -- for any progressive to encourage fellow progressives and others in those states to vote for a third-party candidate is, I would say, to be complicit in facilitating the election of Romney and Ryan, with all its consequences." ~Daniel Ellsberg

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.” ~George Orwell, 1984

"Many people think that Congress regulates Wall Street, but in fact it is Wall Street that regulates Congress. Virtually no piece of legislation can pass through Congress unless it has the okay from corporate America and big money interests."~Bernie Sanders, Independent, VT

"Let me warn you, and let me warn the nation, against the smooth evasion that says, 'Of course we believe all these things. We believe in social security. We believe in work for the unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things! But we do not like the way the present administration is doing them....'" FDR

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country…. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed." ~Abraham Lincoln

"Every good citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent the coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the "Havenots" arraigned against the creed of the "Haves." -- Theodore Roosevelt, October 14, 1912

"Love how the GOP, after bringing the economy to the brink of ruin in 2008, are now acting like someone else farted." ~Andy Borowitz

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything." ~Alexander Hamilton

"A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing." ~Alexander Hamilton

"Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things." ~Alexander Hamilton

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." ~Ambrose Bierce

“The "Trickle-Down" Theory: the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.” ~William Blum

"A President Romney would push legislation, sign it, reverse it, reinstate it, deny it was ever passed, veto it retroactively, then prosecute it aggressively." ~Pasquino

"Why is it that if you take advantage of a corporate tax break you're a smart businessman, but if you take advantage of something so you don't go hungry you're a moocher?" ~Jon Stewart

''You can say anything you want during a debate and 80 million people hear it. If reporters then document that a candidate spoke untruthfully, ''so what?'' ~Peter Teeley, press secretary to Vice President Bush, 1984

"If these stories are true these men are not bankers, they are banksters who rob the poor, drive the innocent to poverty and suicide and do infinite injury to those who honestly work and strive. Worse than that, they are traitors to our institutions and national ideas." ~Herbert Hoover, upon learning of the predatory practices of Wall Street bankers before, during and after the Crash of 1929.

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.” ~Congressman Paul Broun, Republican from Georgia, member of the House Science Committee

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." Voltaire

"The institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.” ~Republican State Rep. Jon Hubbard of Jonesboro, Arkansas

"The good journalist must recognize in Fascism certain ancient virtues of the race, whether or not they happen to be momentarily fashionable in his own country. Among these are Discipline, Duty, Courage, Glory, Sacrifice." FORTUNE magazine, July 1934

"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people." ~Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations 1776

"People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as ‘parasites’ fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society.” ~Jason Read

"The moneyed elite in this country are dragging a bag filled with your future down the steps, and [the Republican base's] reaction is, 'Hold on there, that looks heavy. Let me give you a hand getting it into your trunk.'" ~Bill Maher

"Here's a guy who comes from a millionaire family, goes through elite schools, has all the breaks in life, and he is lecturing working families, people who are on Social Security and Medicare, about personal responsibility. Well, these are people, who in some cases have served in the military, defended our country, raised kids, worked 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week, they know life. They don't want to be lectured by some millionaire guy talking to his millionaire friends about personal responsibility." ~Senator Bernie Sanders on Mitt Romney

"My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." ~Mitt Romney

Occupy Wall Street Isn't About Real Estate

From Reuters, a good summary of the cluelessness of "the haves and the have-mores" who've been catered to and hugely benefited over the past 30 years.

If you think this preferred treatment of the very rich is an illusion or an invention, it was expressed very succinctly and clearly, even arrogantly and jokingly, by George W. Bush when he ran for the presidency in 2000. He might almost have been addressing a frat dinner at Yale. The man oozes privilege. How did America not see this and worry about it? We were carefully instructed otherwise by a media owned and operated by the 1%. Journalists who tried to tell the truth were let go, muzzled, discouraged, suppressed, edited. More systematically they were not given microphones on 24 hour cable news.

Could there be a more cynical, cheerful acknowledgement of what's become of this country?

Nicholas Kristof says something important in today's New York Times: the Occupy movement isn't and needn't be about the real estate. It is and should be about the idea of vast inequality, vast power of the very few vs. powerlessness of the many.

Via MSNBC, a retired Phildelphia police captain worries that the brutal crackdowns in NY, Oakland, Seattle and elsewhere represent corporate America using the police as hired thugs. Hired violence is a chilling throwback to darker periods in our history. Watch the more documentary passages in The Grapes of Wrath and you'll see how police were co-opted by the powerful and the moneyed in a period of economic depression. We don't need to borrow examples from the Nazi era, we have our own.

These evictions also remind me of the violent treatment of the 1932 Bonus Army by Douglas MacArthur, with the encouragement of President Hoover, as explained in the Guardian newspaper.

I also can't help being reminded of the American Revolution. Valley Forge has been mentioned, as the occupiers faced a winter in the open, but the more important comparison is with the strategy Washington used then against overwhelming odds. He didn't confront, he avoided battles that would destroy his smaller force. He used evasive tactics. He and his army endured and eventually won. He won by enduring and keeping the message alive. 99% of Americans need to understand how much wealth and power has been taken from them by the 1% over the past 30 years. This is a fact that Wall Street is working very hard to obscure and disguise.

Here's a good summary of the victory of the 1% written by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Here's a very good summary of what the 1% have stolen from all of us, from the New York Review of Books. We should resurrect the term "Robber Barons" first employed by journalists like Mark Twain in the 19th century.

Vigorous regulation of Wall Street has come from both parties in the past. Today, we only see it from the Democrats. (Obama's attempts to get more thorough reform have been thwarted by a lockstep Republican minority in the Senate.) People forget the original opponent of Wall Street power was Theodore Roosevelt, a progressive Republican who would be drummed out of today's GOP.

Many progressives wonder why Obama hasn't waded fully into this Wall Street confrontation. Why hasn't he given a speech like FDR's famous "I welcome their hatred" speech calling out the plutocrats of great wealth? Well, these times are different. Washington is more narrowly divided, and the powers arrayed on the side of Wall Street are more considerable than they were in the 1930s. Here's a very useful discussion of these times vs. those times, by my friend Eric Black.

Prior to the New Deal most old people lived in poverty. FDR eliminated old age poverty, and in some ways helped create what we've come to call The Generation Gap. Much of that gap is a difference in world view between insecure young people and secure old people. The young of today fear they won't have the secure life their grandparents have enjoyed. And it appears their grandparents don't care or don't understand. Lori Sturdevant has a good piece about this in today's StarTribune. The blindness of older Americans to what is happening to their children's and grandchildren's future is downright alarming, and it makes it hard for the White House to be more confrontational. It's not about government debt at all; it's about the impoverishment of the vast majority of working Americans. A new Pew Center report examines this gradual but dramatic trend across age groups; it's summarized in The Atlantic.

The defenders of Big Money have no problem being confrontational. This recently discovered memo from a Wall Street lobbyist lays out their plan to discredit the Occupy movement. They have the lock on cable news and talk radio and the advertising apparatus to do this. A link to the actual memo is enclosed.

Here is a careful backgrounder on one of the counterprotests that's gotten a lot of play. Like the Tea Party movement, there is a bogus element. The Tea Party was funded by billionaires. The Occupy movement is genuine grass roots, with all its variety and occasional anger and shabbiness. It's real.

Today's Must-Read-the art of the possible and the manipulation of history

A great Ezra Klein analysis of the new Suskind book about the economic crisis and Obama's handling of it. Suskind does what opponents, critics and fantasists love doing: he simplifies complex situations, evades hard facts, ignores contradictory evidence, and assumes he would do better than the people he writes about. Economics is a dismal science, politics is an ugly business and democracy is a grueling enterprise, but all three are necessary. Fantasists do not perform well in these fields but they have no trouble writing about the practical people who do the work.

In effect, Suskind and many other Obama critics are impatient, impractical, unforgiving people, with short attention spans and short memories. Obama didn't have the luxury FDR had. FDR arrived when the worst had happened and was given a large majority to put things right. We could have done worse this time around. We may yet do better if we show, wisdom, patience, practical sense and unity.

The 99% Are Being Heard

Most of the mainstream media still don't "get" what the Wall Street protests are about. This CBC interviewer tries rubbishing the protesters in the usual way, and Pulitzer Prize reporter Chris Hedges politely explains where the interviewer is wrong and then calmly folds the man up and puts him back in his sanitary wrapper.

There must be a circulating rule book titled "How to Dismiss, Insult and Marginalize Anyone Who Opposes the Total Power of Hedge Fund Billionaires", which instructs network talking heads how to be rude to people outside the money elite. Most TV hosts are contemptuous of this movement, and contemptuous in the same way, using the same words, the same references to the 60s and hippies and drugs and guitars and bongos. There has to be an approved script. Maybe Frank Luntz provided it.

(You might not know this, but most TV talking heads live in small furnished apartments inside the pockets of the expensive suits you see billionaires wearing when they creep from marble office to forty foot limousine. So talking heads are always alert to the moods of their billionaire hosts. Sadly, they have a tin ear for the lives and concerns of the real people living on the other side of the TV screen.)

Good news. According to this story in Business Insider, the Occupy Wall Street movement, sometimes called "The 99%", are twice as popular as the "Tea Party" movement (which is paid for and fully owned by the Koch Brothers and other billionaires).

The movement is spreading and gaining allies. It has a way to go yet. Take a look at the popular protests that took place in Paris in 1968. They were huge. They involved everyone, every class, every walk of life. Their mistake was resorting to violence––if they hadn't they would likely have succeeded.

The trick of true influence is a mixture of assertiveness and patience. The 99% have a real message. They are us. They are teachers, electricians, firemen, students, nurses, engineers, small businesspeople, retirees, people from working and middle class neighborhoods.

The majority of Americans agree that concentrated wealth has harmed the economy, made it less stable, less sustainable. We aren't pushing for confiscation of capital, we are talking about putting capital to work the way we used to. Putting Americans to work, and paying for that work in a way that strengthens the entire economy not just the top 1%.

Call it liberal if you like. But wouldn't a true conservative want to restore and keep the institutions and rules that have worked well for us? The system that grew out of the New Deal worked very well between 1945 and 1980, the most prosperous period in American history. The Republican revolution dismantled that system, and we've seen what happened. Look who's prospered and who hasn't.

Trading with Our Enemies–Treason or Patriotism?

From Bloomberg News: the Koch Brothers flouted U.S. law prohibiting trading with enemies of the U.S. They did business with Iran, who funded the recently convicted underwear bomber and other terrorists far more competent and dangerous. The person who uncovered the wrongdoing was a Koch employee whose job it was to check company compliance with laws and ethics. When she found non-compliance she was quickly transferred and subsequently fired.

Is this new? No. Unique? Not at all.

Trading with the enemy used to have the quaint label of "Treason", but no longer. When Dick Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton, his company traded with Iran too. They broke explicit U.S. laws in doing so. A grand jury was empaneled and a Senate Committee reported on the lawbreaking, but Mr. Cheney did not go to jail. Maybe because he'd become George W. Bush's Vice President.

Forbes magazine reported on Halliburton's ingenuity in evading laws. But Halliburton isn't the only company mentioned. Dell, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft are also tagged. Treason? Corporations are (thanks to the Republican majority in the Supreme Court) legally classified as "people" ––except when they commit treason. Then they aren't people and are immune from capital punishment.

A BBC report from 2002 shows Cheney was also linked to charges of stock manipulation and corporate fraud. Again nothing happened. He was Vice President.

A good summary of the corruption at Halliburton under the leadership of Dick Cheney and during his period as Vice President when he fed contracts to the company and continued to receive payments from the company can be found at Business Ethics magazine.

This way of doing business may be treasonous but it is commonplace and seldom punished. Halliburton has since moved its headquarters to Dubai as a way of evading American taxes, regulation and legal liability. It still earns its billions off the American taxpayer but it keeps its offices and profits safely offshore.

CBS Marketwatch published this in 2003, as America went to war:

"When individual Americans are accused of helping terrorists, they're thrown in jail and their names are dragged through the mud. But when major U.S. corporations are caught trading with the enemy, they get just a slap on the wrist from the government. In the past two weeks, the government has revealed that 57 companies and organizations have been fined for doing business with terrorists, despots and tyrants."

"However, neither the government nor the companies are forthcoming with the public about the details of the illicit trade with rogue governments like Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Sudan."

Not done yet. This article from The Guardian outlines how the father of George H. W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush helped finance the Nazi war machine, funneling investment money to the companies that used slave labor to prepare Germany to invade Poland, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Belgium Norway, and rain bombs on London. His firm helped build the war machine that precipitated the global war that killed (by conservative estimates) 60 million people. This financing of the Nazis was legal until war broke out. The war declaration finally made it a crime and the capital investments were seized in 1942. He lost lots of money but Senator Bush didn't go to jail. Why was Prescott Bush less immune than Dick Cheney?

There's another kind of treason that doesn't involve aiding fascist dictators bent on destroying America. If it's homegrown is it more patriotic? Prescott Bush was also one of the Wall Street figures behind a 1934 plot to overthrow the Roosevelt presidency. Here is a recent BBC program about the plot which nearly turned America into a fascist state.

Today's Wall Street bigshots may be losing the ability to be traitors here at home. They've exported so many jobs and so much of our manufacturing muscle to China that America isn't really worth overthrowing anymore.

It will be interesting to see whether Immelt does anything to repair his anti-American record. This article in Foreign Policy Magazine asks the same question. He's now in charge of restoring the American jobs picture, hired by Obama much as Wall Street pirate Joseph Kennedy was hired by FDR to set up the SEC. Who knows the criminals better than these guys?

Getting back to massive criminal extortion, and back to the Koch Brothers–––the Koch Bros have now been implicated in the 2008 spike in gasoline prices––at a time when demand was slack and supply was sufficient prices still went to record highs. How much did these manipulations steal from Americans? And how much did this theft of household liquidity contribute to the near collapse of our economy in late 2008?

This is predatory behavior similar to the kind of market gaming that Enron traders laughingly executed against the utilities customers of California.

Listen to those tapes, reported years later when obtained by CBS News, and you get a sense of the cold-bloodedness of the traders involved, and the cold-bloodedness of the game Enron set up and exploited. Enron did its damnedest to bankrupt the largest state in the nation rather than let up when public finances imploded and citizens suffered rolling blackouts.

"They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron employee on the tapes. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"

"Yeah, grandma Millie, man"

"Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour."

Traders or traitors? Businessmen or criminals? It's hard to tell the difference. Sometimes, not often but sometimes, corporations are run by psychopaths. (I covered this in an earlier post.) When this happens, it happens because there's lax regulation, because there's a sense of impunity, because the government watchdogs have been defanged and defunded, and there's too much money available to be stolen. When this happens it's very hard for an ethical company to compete. And there are ethical companies. Most corporations are pretty good employers and good citizens. By cracking down on the bad actors wouldn't we be helping them? Maybe a few good corporations should join the protests on Wall Street.

Farm Politics

A good story from NPR. (Does NPR do any other kind?)

This quote seems to catch the gist of it: "According to the Environmental Working Group's crunch of USDA numbers, between 1995 and 2010, 10 percent of farmers who received subsidies took home three-quarters of farm subsidy dollars. About 62 percent of American farmers don't receive any subsidies at all, according to 2007 data."

When FDR created the idea of farm subsidies it was to keep poor farmers on their farms during years of low commodity prices, and to help stabilize the prices of those commodities. It worked. Since then, though, farms have consolidated into immense businesses. Agri-business owns farmland. Farming has gone corporate, and the corporate side of farming is taking most of the subsidies. To borrow a farm analogy, the larger pigs have a way of shouldering the smaller ones away from the trough. Wrong? Maybe not, but we should know what is going on. There are good reasons for having small farms, family farms, just as there are good reasons for having small towns. But is modern farm legislation helping either?

Only Deficit Spending Will Save Us

Today's must-read comes from the chief economist at the Financial Times.

People have been bullied and misled about the so-called "ogre" of deficit spending. During a recessionary period, when businesses are not spending and tax revenues are down, the government becomes the key player. All other players are sitting on the sidelines, so government has to act. Government has to spend when no one else will. It may be the most crucial role government plays in our lives––unless you subscribe to the idea that government's only role is blowing up our enemies and fencing our borders.

The founders knew the importance of a national debt. Alexander Hamilton created a robust national economy by creating the national debt. Washington presided over this. Business wealth grew in America because we had a national debt. The great presidents knew this and used this tool to create infrastructure. Eisenhower didn't win WWII, rebuild Europe or build the interstate highway system with ready cash.

FDR got us through the Great Depression with deficit spending. Without it millions would have died of starvation and disease, not to mention millions more households that would have been broken up, homes and businesses lost. Instead, well built bridges and parks, roads and dams, electrical grid work in rural areas, hospitals, schools and public buildings were the result. We still see those projects in use today. We also see several generations who got higher education through the G.I. Bill, the last liberal "good deed" created by FDR. Millions would never have gone to college but for the New Deal.

FDR did make one key mistake, though. In 1936 he promised to balance the budget. His attempt to do so when the economy was still weak caused a second recession in 1937. It was only the massive deficit spending of WWII that finally ended the Great Depression.

In good times we pay our debt back... unless we have a Republican leadership that decides good times are a reason to loosen up, to throw no-strings tax breaks at corporations that are shifting jobs overseas.

Government needs to do the opposite of what businesses do. In bad times, government must spend. In good times, government spending is less important than government oversight to make sure the private sector doesn't create another financial collapse. Think if it as Id and SuperEgo. In good times the private sector needs a grown-up in the room, a conscience. In bad times, it needs someone to clean up its messes.

Handling a Manic-Depressive Economy

For half a century it was the successful policy of the U.S. government to moderate the moods of the economy, mostly to keep the economy from dropping into a depression, but also to keep it from overheating. To act as a thermostat. This required government to modulate markets, to soften the hardship and deprivation at the low end of the cycle and rein in the excess reward at the upper end––something it's much harder to do because the rich investor class has thousands of lobbyists working to keep the upper end from any moderation however rational. When there is excess pressure in one direction it's necessary to pull in the opposite direction. This is what keeps boats afloat and cars on the road.

COUNTERCYCLICAL. Try Googling that word and you don't come up with much. A few arcane economic articles available in PDF. One of the most important jobs of government is to counter the irregularities of the economy. Prior to the regulations inaugurated in the early 20th century the U.S. economy had catastrophic nationwide bank panics every few years. These panics ruined millions of people and threw millions more out of work, broke up families, bankrupted thousands of farms and businesses, saw towns dry up and disappear, and precipitated waves of suicide and child abandonment.

The veers and spikes of the economy allowed a few speculators to become enormously wealthy. Bubbles inflated and popped leaving millions in the hands of a few clever people. Sometimes the speculators precipitated the bubbles and the panics in order to profit from them. Regulation put an end to the worst predatory market behaviors and ushered in the long period of broad prosperity that characterized the best half century in American history. It was a bit boring, perhaps, but homeowners and families don't benefit from financial rollercoasters. The dismantling of those regulations in the years after Reagan took away or weakened the countercyclical tools of the federal government and ushered in poorer labor markets, more fluctuations, more bubbles, more Wall Street misbehavior and led to the near collapse of 2008-2009. If the government had a stronger hand we'd be recovering more broadly now, but Reaganism has concentrated the recovery at the top. We have a topheavy poorly balanced economy that is more unstable and less seaworthy.

Unregulated economies sometimes behave like those overloaded ferries that occasionally capsize in the straits of southeast Asia. When they become overweighted on one side, everyone rushes to the opposite side and the craft capsizes. In moments of imbalance the craft needs a counterbalance to remain afloat. In the economic context this is the job of government. To put weight on the side that everyone is rushing away from. To spend money when everyone is afraid to. To spend money in areas that are slack, on necessary infrastructure that has been neglected––even when there is a shortage of revenue to do so. That is a function only government can fulfill, because government works over longer spans of time and across broader areas. Government thinks in terms of economic climate patterns rather than the weather of the moment. Across the United States one year's drought will visit another region next year. Knitting smaller regional markets and different sectors together helps keep the broad economy afloat.

Government's job is to moderate the spikes and the depressions, to balance the interests of different sectors, and it's foolish to take that capability away. There is a name for that do-nothing philosophy. Herbert Hooverism. Government isn't the enemy in an economic crisis. As was seen in the worst weeks of the crisis, government is essential, and never more essential than when free markets fail. We need a better vocabulary for explaining this. A better set of descriptive models. The government is a sure hand on the steering wheel, a thermostat to keep the house livable summer and winter. The government is also fire and police and public health departments when things go wrong. But this countercyclical role of government, this balancing mechanism, is key and little discussed. It needs to be part of the public conversation. When no one is spending is the most important time for government to keep money flowing in the economy. Government is the only entity that can and will work in opposition to the frightened impulses that have us paralyzed. Countercyclical is a cumbersome word. Maybe we need a better one.