June 25, 2010
Morning Edition had a useful piece about efforts to stimulate the economy with budget deficits and the attempt to rein in these deficits. It compared this deficit reduction to President Roosevelt’s effort to balance the budget in 1937 which led to a second recession.
While the piece included some discussion of the size of current deficits, it would have been useful to note the size of the hole in private sector spending that the government is trying to fill. The collapse of the housing bubble led to a falloff in residential construction of more than $500 billion annually. The collapse of the bubble in non-residential real estate led to a drop of more than $100 billion in construction in this sector. And, the loss of housing bubble wealth led to decline of more than $500 billion in wealth driven consumption. The total loss of private sector demand is more than $1 trillion a year. This is gap that must be filled by stimulus from the government sector.
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