The U.S. Needs a Meaningful Mortgage Settlement: Simon Johnson
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Discussions around this weekend’s International Monetary Fund annual meetings in Washington made it clear that the standard macroeconomic toolkit has little more to offer the U.S. It’s time to try something else.
Monetary policy has reached its limits, and further fiscal stimulus isn’t in the cards. Three years into the financial crisis, the U.S. economy is still held back by weak consumer confidence. Meanwhile, the global financial system continues to face instability, most notably because of the persistent sovereign-debt crisis in Europe.