Let My Free Market Go: Alternate Recession Strategy

"Some Economists Say Best Way to Battle Recession Is a Do-Nothing Stimulus "

The debate on Capitol Hill this week is all about the size of the stimulus: Should it be big? Bigger? A behemoth? But there is another school of thought that's getting less attention.


Call them the do-nothings.

In these free-spending times there's a growing movement among economists who say the best way out of this recession is to do nothing, nothing at all.
"I think there's nothing wrong with doing nothing," David Henderson of the Hoover Institution told "Good Morning America."
Nor do the 250 other economists who signed on this week to an ad in the New York Times and Washington Post.

"Government just doesn't work very well," said Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "We tried big spending under Bush, it didn't work. We tried big spending under Hoover, it didn't work.

"A lot of bad government policies got us into this mess and we don't have a magic wand to get us out right away," he said.