Balance sheet recessions

Mark Thoma in The Fiscal Times takes a stab at explaining this recession and policy:

As this year comes to a close, and as we finally begin the recovery stage of the recession, it’s a good time to look back and ask how policymakers could have improved their response to the downturn. What can we learn from this recession? How can we do better the next time a large financial shock hits the economy?

There are many ways policy could have been improved; providing more help for state and local governments is high on the list, but I’ll focus on another way: using fiscal policy to help households make up for losses from the recession. This is an important, but too often ignored aspect of recovering from what are known as “balance sheet recessions.”