Help Households Not Banks

Here is my contribution to The New Republic's symposium "Is There Anything That Can Be Done?"

Help Households Not Banks

I was asked to answer relatively specific questions, so if you've been hanging around here for awhile you will have heard some of these arguments before.

For all contributions (they are still adding to the collection) click here. Here's the collection so far:

• Peter Diamond on why we should fix Social Security first.
• Felix Salmon on why more workers would help create more jobs.
• Jim Manzi on why we should be thinking small. 
• Jonathan Cohn in response to Peter Diamond.
• Richard Posner on why we're in a depression, not a recession.
• Stephen Rose on why a slow economic recovery isn't so bad.
• Jared Bernstein on Obama's many options to right the economy.
• Ruy Teixeira on how to exploit America's contradictory relationship to Keynes.
• Robert Shapiro on how Obama is completely mishandling the economy.
• Dean Baker on how S&P's downgrade didn't cause a stock market crash.
• Robert Shiller on how we can do stimulus without adding debt.