Originally Posted by scout

Heres my take on it simplified and in a nutshell:

Money coming in from countries buying American goods such as food, supplies, guns, planes and tanks for their own war effort was a huge contributor in spending us out of the Great Depression. The post war boom was primarily funded by foreign countries buying American goods to rebuild all that was destroyed during the war. Even though we are in two wars now things aren't the same because most of our war effort is imported rather than exported as it was back then. The idea that spending a trillion dollars to build bridges and changing light bulbs in government buildings without generating any real wealth is somehow going to miraculously drag us out of a terrible recession long term is asinine to say the least. It will definitely help short term but it's not a long term fix by any stretch of the imagination. Until we get the trade deficit turned around and start deporting goods and importing foreign monies again things are only going to get worse over the long term.