"Dean Baker is the Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and a believer of the theory that we are our own worst enemy when it comes to getting the country back on its feet, financially speaking.
“We’re worsening the economy,” Baker says. “The government was helping originally with President Obama’s stimulus package but it wasn’t big enough and now most of that has faded out, so most of the spending has already taken place.”
And even though we have very little to show for all that spending, this PhD in economics from the University of Michigan thinks we have no choice but to spend even more. He says the country is fixated on reducing the deficit when we should be consumed with creating jobs and boosting the economy. He figures the combined effect of state, local, and now Federal spending cutbacks amounts to roughly a 1% drag on GDP.
And even though our Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is an expert in the great depression, Baker says we are about to make the same mistake FDR did 75-years ago. “The unemployment rate when President Roosevelt came in was 25%,” Baker says, and with the help of several unprecedented works projects, FDR “go it down to 10%”.................READ MORE
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