CapitalistImperialistPig

Look now at all current expenditures: FRED again Note that while detrended federal expenditures do uptick sharply, the uptick is almost entirely matched by decreasing (detrended) State expenditures, and only brief and modest bumps above the long term trend appear in the combined data.

Someone, I think, claimed that there had been a "huge" government stimulus since 2008. Let's look at the numbers. Graphs are of government consumption and net investment. Red is total, green is State and local, and blue federal. These don't include transfer payments which move money from one part of the private sector to another. Nor do they include 2010. From FRED , again.

One trouble with economic arguments is that sarcasm and tribal loyalties always come into play at which point logic goes out the window. So let me start with some data. Here is real US GDP from 2000 to present. ( Saint Louis Fed Data ). Macroeconomists have elaborate models for computing the output gap, but a good approximation can be seen just by extrapolating the line from the (relatively slow growth) Bush years before the crash. Note that (a) the GDP was in free fall before TARP and the stimulus, and (b) resumed slow growth during and after. Just sayin'.