Pigs Are Now Taking Flight: The PIMCO Edition

Bill Gross, the managing director of PIMCO and bond trader, sounds like Mike the Mad Chartalist (italics mine; boldface mine):

While the current administration admits that the $25 billion in Recovery Act spending on infrastructure only created 150,000 jobs, it also stabilized and improved this nation's productivity for years to come. Clean/green energy investments also come to mind, most of which require government funding and a government thrust in order to create millions of jobs. China knows this and is off and running. The U.S. needs to learn from their state-oriented model. In times of extremis, pushing on the private sector string is ineffective, especially within the context of a global marketplace that offers alternative investment locations. Government must temporarily assume a bigger, not a smaller, role in this economy, if only because other countries are dominating job creation with kick-start policies that eventually dominate global markets.

In the end, I hearken back to revered economist Hyman Minsky - a modern-day economic godfather who predicted the subprime crisis. "Big Government," he wrote, should become the "employer of last resort" in a crisis, offering a job to anyone who wants one - for health care, street cleaning, or slum renovation. FDR had a program for it - the CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps, and Barack Obama can do the same. Economist David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff sums up my feelings rather well. "I'd have a shovel in the hands of the long-term unemployed from 8am to noon, and from 1pm to 5pm I'd have them studying algebra, physics, and geometry." Deficits are important, but their immediate reduction can wait for a stronger economy and lower unemployment. Jobs are today's and tomorrow's immediate problem.

Again, this is a bond trader, who just six months ago, was a deficit reduction fanatic.

Maybe our elites are finally starting to panic....