MARTIN BAILY, Brookings Institution: Well, I was very pleased that Bernanke supported that. The economy is looking pretty ugly at the moment. I would expect that we’re going to report a negative third quarter. The fourth quarter looks like it could be substantially down. And then probably a continuing recession into the first half of 2009.<\/p>\n
So we need to try to sort of reverse that. Initially, the financial crisis didn’t seem to be having that much ill effect on the overall economy, jobs and production, but now it is. And we need to do something to reverse that. And I think a stimulus package is definitely needed.<\/p>\n
JEFFREY BROWN: Do you agree with that as a starting point?<\/p>\n
WILLIAM BEACH, Heritage Foundation: I think the problems of the financial sector are beginning to spread throughout the economy. We’ve had such a long period of time when credit was tightening. Every day, we would get more news of tighter credit.<\/p>\n
And ultimately that affects people where they work, their payrolls, vendors in businesses, and then it goes out into the consuming public, because they can’t get the credit necessary.<\/p>\n