South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect writes that the sputtering economy needs another recovery package.

This apparent policy paralysis is mainly a reflection of how much damage was done by the financial collapse.
…
What we face is not an ordinary macro-economic challenge of recovering from an ordinary recession. There is huge structural damage – everything from the loss of trillions of dollars of household net worth due to the housing collapse to weakened bank balance sheets to an epidemic of outsourcing as corporations try to cut their own costs. It all adds up to a massive deflationary drag. The proof is that neither zero interest rates nor double digit deficits — which ordinarily would provide very rapid growth — are curing the problem. But the government still has the remedy of large-scale, job-intensive public investment. Economic history shows that when the private sector is too traumatized to revive economic activity and employment, public investment is the only way to jump start a full recovery.
…
Obviously, the Republicans will never to agree to a program of large public investment. But Obama ought to propose one. It would be far better, both for Obama and for the country, to have the 2012 election as a referendum on jobs rather than an arcane and counterproductive debate about two brands of budget cutting.