Krugman: Spend Now, Save Later

[Final-Fan]

mrstickball said:

Final-Fan said:
But the implication of your argument that government should NOT intervene in that way is that it should do nothing beyond manipulating interest rates, which, considering they are currently at zero, would be doing nothing, which is a recipe for disaster IMO.  The private market is proven to be prone to periodic catastrophe, and the only one that can do anything about it IMO is the government.  Do you disagree with any of the points in my post, and how so? 

Could you provide examples in the US that the private market has had periodic catastrophe, and that government intrvention via spending was the only way to solve the mess?

So, assuming that the other conversation has concluded, I will continue. 

I'm not saying that government intervention is the only solution.  But the only alternative to gov't internvention is to let the private sector sort things out naturally, which history shows is pretty painful. 

Unless I'm missing something there is private market and government and nothing else (beyond grey area between the two).  So by definition the only option other than letting the depression run its natural course is government intervention.