"Every problem is a nail when your only tool is a hammer. The Obama administration did not want to let the economic crisis it walked into after the 2008 election go to waste, and it used classic Keynesian policies to restore aggregate demand … and sweep in as many items that had been languishing for decades on the Democratic party’s to-do list as it could. The arguments that we would be better off now if the 2009 stimulus had been much bigger refuse to acknowledge the possibility that the unique features of our current economic situation have rendered such initiatives expensive irrelevancies. There may not be policy measures available that substantially improve our economic situation or hasten our recovery. The overarching policy imperative is to do no harm, to avoid mistakes that make a slow recovery even slower or more uncertain."