The so-called new economic consensus has begun to reassess the role and place of fiscal policy and is calling for its restitution in certain cases. Although a "consensus" may exist on various macroeconomic issues within this literature, fiscal policy is not one of them. The debate is stirred...

The article evaluates the fiscal policy initiatives during the Great Recession in the United States. It argues that, although the nonconventional fiscal policies targeted to the financial sector dwarfed conventional countercyclical stabilization efforts directed to the real sector, the...