The Stimulus Hurt the Economy

In a companion to the earlier piece on the escalating debt, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan confirms what many of us already knew: The stimulus hurt the economy.

Massive government intervention to save the economy is to blame for the lagging recovery, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Tuesday.

Greenspan argued for less government intervention to get the recovery rolling and businesses investing in equipment and plants.

“What we need to do now is to calm down; let things move by themselves,” he said at a forum at the Council of Foreign Relations. “And indeed the rate of activism has decreased significantly and the ratio of capital flow has inched back up.”

Some economists blame Greenspan, who served as Fed chair from 1987 to 2006, for keeping interest rates too low for too long and for failing to sound the alarm that Wall Street was over-leveraged and running wild.

But with Republicans in control of the House, Greenspan’s views are starting to gain an audience again. Many Republicans share his opinion that intervention has created uncertainty and deterred private sector investing.

Greenspan targeted deficits created by the $787 billion 2009 Recovery Act as the main culprit behind the current sputtering recovery.

However, it did fatten the wallets of any number of Democrat special interest groups...as intended.