Dan Froomkin, the deputy editor of the Nieman Watchdog Project, has seven economics-related story ideas that business journalists should be working on now because they’re bigger issues than current stories have implied.
Here is one of them:
No. 4: Then what? This time, we don’t have the tools to get out of a recession
The recognized way of dealing with a recession is to lower interest rates in order to stimulate the economy. But the Federal Reserve can’t lower the rate to below zero, so that’s out.
The government can pour vast amounts of money into the economy, either through a stimulus or a massive bailout — or, as the case may be, both.
But next time around, that money might not be there. Not only could the political will be lacking, but there is an upper limit to just how much money the country can borrow and spend at one time without it doing more harm than good.
Read the rest of them here.
