Neel Kashkari on the $2 trillion rescue package

Think of firefighters putting out a fire. If their primary aim is to conserve water, they increase the odds of losing control of the fire.

The $2 trillion legislation includes many provisions to help both businesses large and small and the millions of Americans who are losing their jobs. As implementation begins, officials will be tempted to develop complex rules to decide who will qualify. For example, if each of the thousands of struggling small businesses needs to be individually vetted, the program is likely to be too slow to meaningfully help the economy. While the U.S. economy can bounce back from a crisis fairly quickly, it took more than 10 years after the 2008 crisis to rebuild the labor market. We can’t let that happen again. Let’s learn from history and douse the raging fire — before it becomes uncontrollable.

~ Neel Kashkari, "What the 2008 rescue package can teach us about today's relief bill," Washington Post, March 27, 2020