The time has come to talk of many things...

Monetary policy, fiscal policy, and the universe. Not long ago someone asked what things would look like if, instead of one central bank (the Fed), each state had it's own central bank operated independently of the others. When the laughter died down, it was obvious to most that a centralized monetary policy was necessary to deal with an important class of problems.

As noted earlier, once interest rates go to zero, monetary policy is no longer useful to an ailing economy. Thus the discussion moves to fiscal policy. Consider the EU where fiscal policy is made independently by each member nation. This discussion illustrates why a centralized fiscal policy is as important as a centralized monetary policy.

As an American, you might want to pat yourself on the back. After all we have a centralized fiscal policy maker, the US Treasury.

Then again you might not. Some considerable amount of our GNP gets spent on imports from abroad. (Think China.) Extrapolate a little from the EU discussion. We live in a worldwide economy. We are already at the point where the only big gun is fiscal policy. Do we need a coordinated worldwide fiscal policy?

Somebody do the math.