Why are people surprised?
Back in 1993 the newly installed Clinton Administration was mad keen on a “stimulus plan” that would revive the US economy from the “terrible” recession of George H W Bush. The plan was classic Keynesianism but it was strangled in the crib for two reasons.
First of all the recession, which was a fairly mild one starting in late 1990, had already finished by mid-1991, as is usually the case. Things like unemployment lagged of course, which was why the MSM was able to make such a meal of it. The crown in the jewel were TV scenes of a four-wide line of job seekers stretching around a city block in the snow in early 1992, applying for jobs at some new Chicago hotel. Had it been filmed in Black & White by Dorothea Lange it could not have been better.
As a result, by the time Bill became President in January 1993 the entire economy was really picking up a head of steam on all fronts, and it was obvious to everybody and their blind dogs that no “stimulus” was needed.
Incidently, having done it’s job up to the election in getting a Democrat elected, the MSM promptly began painting sunny headlines about how well the economy was doing under the youthful leadership of Bill, even while everybody again knew that no credit could be given to an administration that had not passed any legislation, let alone anything that could affect the economy in less than six months.
Second was that Bill made a crucial mistake in appointing Senator Robert Byrd to lead the stimulus bill effort in the Democrat-controlled Senate and House. In addition to being a former Grand Kleagal of the KKK (and whose death years later would result in an ecstatic eulogy by then Vice President Joe Biden), he was also known as the Porkiest of the Porkmasters of Congress. There was hardly a highway, courthouse, outhouse or doghouse in his state of West Virginia that didn’t have his name on it as a result of the money he’d extracted from Congress. Even Democrats rolled their eyes at what a stimulus package in Bryd’s hands would mean.
The effort rapidly faltered and that was a good thing for the USA, which economy did not need a “stimulus” from the Federal government: the 1990’s would go on to be one of the great economic times in recent US history.
But lessons are not learned. While there might have been some justification for the 2009 stimulus spending plans in the wake of a financial meltdown far worse than that of 1987 (which also led to another such failed effort by the Democrat Party in the face of Reagan’s opposition), it was obvious by the end of that year that it had not spiced up the economy. Obama regularly bemoaned the reports that landed on his desk showing only moderate improvements, bluntly asking his experts and fellow Democrats why all the spending was having no effect.
But in the face of a government-induced lockdown of a roaring economy there was never a need for the insane amounts of spending to continue as the Chinese Lung Rot pandemic waned and the lockdowns and other restrictions were lifted. All that was required was for the government to simply allow the economy to come back to life, as it had in 1992/93 and earlier recessions. Yet each of the subsequent recessions of 2001/2, 2008/9 and 2020 have been met with ever greater stimulus efforts.
Yet, far from helping, there’s good evidence that government efforts in 2021 have caused unemployment to stick in the face of massive welfare incentives not to return to work. Then there’s the rapidly rising inflation in the USA, as all that created credit chases products and services that are not increasing as fast as the tsunami of money. The incredible number of business destroyed by the Covid-19 pandemic response will not be magically re-created by Federal spending.
So we have that graph of US debt, piling onto trillions of already existing debt, even as the spending it allows fails to do its Keynesian job.
This cannot end well, and is already not going well. As the economist Hebert Stein once wrote: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Brace for impact.
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See Also:
Stagflation and Pretty Graphs – May 2021
This is not going to get better – Feb 2019
No Minister 
and to a degree you are seeing that replicated in good ole Aotearoa …