I’ve often argued on this blog and in the column that now is a particularly bad time to cut spending, because unlike in normal times, the adverse effects on demand can’t be offset by cutting interest rates. One way to highlight the point is to compare where we are now with a historical episode: the fairly large cuts in federal purchases of goods and services that took place in the early 1990s, as the US military shrank with the end of the Cold War. Here’s federal consumption and investment spending as a share of potential GDP (blue, left scale) versus the Fed funds rate (red, right scale):
The Fed could and did cut rates, helping to cushion the impact of spending cuts. It can’t do anything like this now, because the Fed funds rate has already been cut more or less to zero in an attempt to fight the effects of financial crisis.
Austerity right now is a really, really bad idea.
