Turns out George Bush is a Keynesian, too

As I said earlier when I was writing as Alex, supply-siders are nothing but neo-Keynesians.

I am more than certain that if you said to W that he is a Keynesian he would tell you that no, he's from texas.

Tired cliche i know - but its friday afternoon before a long weekend.

A more useful question/comment...

When I went to business school, I seem to recall a session on economics that implied that when creating fiscal policy:

1) businesses responded better to short-term temporary incentives and
2) individuals responded better to long-term permanent incentives

The reason being companies hired lots of smart people to be aware of this kind of thing and would take advantage of short term incentives, whereas people were, uh, less gifted, and it took time for people to work out what they should do under new incentive regimes and change their behaviour...

A) Do you ever recall reading/hearing something along these lines and is it true or bunk? I have no links/documents/etc - just a vague memory from 7-8 years ago.

B) If true, therefore, excluding instant tax rebates which I don't think fall into an 'incentive' category, shouldnt a stimulus package for the average individual be non-temporary?

C) If true, are we just poop out of luck on trying to rush the recession out of the system given this?

What is most interesting about this is just how lame a "lame duck" Bush will be for the next year. He already stated that his top priority for the last year of his presidency is to make his tax cuts permanent -- and it looks (for all intents and purposes) like that isn't gonna happen this year. (Dems would trade off making the cuts in the lower brackets permanent for an immediate expiration of Bush's fat cat tax cuts, but I doubt if he'd accept that...so we'll have to wait for next year.)

Basically, Bush is now a seat-warmer for the next president. His foreign policy is in shambles, he and he has no significant domestic initiatives to offer. And right now, the Dems are in the catbird's seat -- the House can pass a stimulus bill that the GOP doesn't like, and if the GOP blocks it in the Senate (or Bush vetoes it and there aren't enough votes to over-ride) the GOP will get the blame.

I think you underestimate the seat-warmers ability to wreak havoc.

And I think you underestimate the GOP's ability to play the media game to swing blame onto Dems for lack of stimulus pkg (not to mention, the Dems ability to explode themselves).

While I am not saying these things will happen, I wouldn't count those chickens yet nor cackle with anticipatory glee and hand-rubbing just yet.

Inaugaration is still just over a year away (Jan 21 sticks in my mind but this is in no way necessarily factual...)

If we do receive this borrowed stimulative largesse, do others think, as I do, that it is important to buy American-made goods and services as much as possible? Whose economies are we really stimulating if we all head down to Target and buy flimsy clothes or junk from the dollar section? The idea of that dollar spinning over and over through our economy does not come into play if that dollar leaves our shores.

[...] Read more about Bush’s consistently Keynesian approach to the economy here, here, here, and here.  On Bernanke and the mid 2000’s “deflation” scare read this and [...]