At the very least, you have to recognize the correlation. If you aren’t willing to consider causation, in part, there’s troubling coincidence in every place around the world between huge government deficits and less growth (therefore the constant inflation “puzzle”).

You can argue that the former causes the latter, and that’s absolutely a valid case; when things get rough, neo-Keynesians gain traction. Therefore, an economy in trouble is going to be one – if Economists rule over politics – where governments (including their central banks) will be doing a lot. That the break in growth comes first, however, doesn’t really settle the matter.



The issue on these narrow grounds becomes one of simple efficacy; does all that spending (and QE) actually work? If it did, there’d be inflationary signposts which would suggest effective measures being carried out; you know where this is going.

Instead, the more the government does (fiscal plus monetary policies) the farther from success we all end up. It may be that simple coincidence; or, it could be that more intrusive and wasteful interventions (QE is a waste, too, in that it steals time) actually compound existing negative factors. Might waste and inefficiency harm more than help? The data doesn’t dispute it (like QE, even academic studies can only come up with “mixed results”).

Either way, big fiscal spending or not, there’s no evidence that it becomes inflationary let alone successful. Again, at the very least there’s the correlation; more government, less growth. 

It’s chock full of Japanese.