Robert Shiller

There's no quicker way to get long-time federal budget watchers to curl up in a fetal position and rock back and forth while moaning in pain than to mention three words: general revenue sharing.  Yet Robert Shiller not only used that phrase this morning in this excellent piece in The New York Times, he recommended that the program be brought back to life as a way to help state and local governments out of their fiscal problems and, therefore, to help fix the U.S. economy.

Some background for those too young to remember or for who the original experience is still too painful to recall voluntarily.

Yale Professor Robert J. Shiller spoke to the National Economists Club at lunch today in Washington, D.C. He expressed concern of slow growth until the next recession, his definition of a double-dip. His 20-city Case-Shiller real home price index declined 35% from its 2006 peak until early 2009, when Fed mortgage backed securities purchases and the homebuyer tax credit pushed it back up just over half as much, but he expects further housing price declines with the expiration of those government interventions on March 31 and April 30 respectively.