Thread by @lydiadepillis

"Recessions start earlier and end later in America than they do in the financial press," says @amyhanauer at @EconomicPolicy event on the next recession. "In Ohio, we no longer recover from recessions at all anymore."

(Economists have put low odds on a recession happening this year or even next, but nobody thinks we'll escape it forever, and the question for this crew is whether we can deal with the next one better than the last.)

.@joshbivens_DC thinks we're ill-prepared for the next recession--but not because of the popular view that tax cuts have sucked up all our "fiscal space" for further stimulus. Low interest rates suggest that even Wall Street believes the feds will do it again if they need to.

@joshbivens_DC Rather, he says, it's because America hasn't dealt with inequality and the dominance of the financial sector, which he thinks will again constrain a robust fiscal response when people really need it again.

(The long version: epi.org/publication/ne… )

.@AngelaHanks pre-buts the austerity impulses that usually follow recessions: "We can afford it. We should spend the money, and we should keep spending the money until people are ok." @joshbivens_DC: "It’s better than a free lunch. It’s people paying you to eat."

Question about UBI. Panel answers with the skepticism that's emanating from the left lately: UBI over-emphasizes the government's role as a writer of checks rather than an efficient provider of public goods like healthcare, housing, childcare, and other needs.

Christina Romer is up. She says it was actually an advantage in 2008 to have a relatively low debt-to-GDP ratio. "It really was the case that policymakers never had to seriously question whether the US had the borrowing capacity to undertake a bold fiscal response to the crisis."

"We managed expectations poorly. Neither the economics team nor the public relations team spent time explaining to the American people how large a crisis we were facing. It allowed people to say that the Recovery Act was ineffectual, when In reality it was too small."

Romer: The one advantage policymakers have now relative to the last crisis is a lot more data on the utility of fiscal stimulus. It works, which you can see both in the fortunes of different countries with various degrees of post-crisis spending, & the aid that went to states.

Nevertheless, political consensus on fiscal stimulus has evaporated. "Even actions like extending unemployment insurance during a long downturn are now highly controversial," Romer says. "It’s truly frightening how divided the two parties have become on this fundamental issue."

But here's where Romer diverges from the previous panel: "We shouldn’t give in to the idea that budget deficits don’t matter. We can afford to do the things that we want to do, but we ought to pay for them.”

Romer says President Obama had wanted to something WPA-like, but agencies couldn't find enough positions for people to make a dent in unemployment. "We just couldn’t figure out a way to do widespread public employment quickly and cost effectively."

More hindsight is 20/20: Romer says the Obama team was "naive" in thinking that as things got worse, they could always go back to Congress and ask for more money. And they tried to be bipartisan in going for tax cuts. But they lost public opinion, because people didn't feel it.

"When the Trump tax cuts passed, I’m sitting here thinking, in 2010, or 2011, this would’ve been a godsend. We would've designed it differently. But how ironic that people refused to do it when we need it, and we got it when we were closing in on full employment."

Thinks a public jobs program would've been more recognizable. And they were so focused on saving the financial system that they didn't do enough to help homeowners. "By George, we should’ve said to the banks, 'you need to write down these mortgages.'"

That will conclude this account's Twitter counterprogramming for the day.