'Round and 'Round.....

Here's today's edition of Tied Up in Knots regarding the politics of the US economy:

• On one hand, as someone rooting for Democrats to win in the Fall, I like to point out that the economy in the US is doing better than in Europe as a whole. In general we've come out of the financial crisis better off than many other Western countries, and I think that's because we did a little more stimulus than they did, and haven't cut back to an austerity focus like many countries in Europe.
• On the other hand, the fact is that the stimulus is long over now and government spending is not filling the demand needed, causing the recovery to stall.
• On the other other hand, liberals want to do more stimulus now, but of course the GOP Congress won't allow that.
• On yet another hand, all signs say that President Obama doesn't really want a stimulus that would be big enough to really matter- but of course the Congress won't allow it anyway.
• No doubt the recovery is stalling, and conservatives want to use this as proof that stimulus doesn't work, and the trouble is that stimulus really didn't do the trick fully- but that doesn't solve the question because while conservatives insist we did too much stimulus which has stalled growth, liberals retort that the problem was that we didn't do enough stimulus.
• Now pro-austerity forces are making the mirror argument to the one above: austerity has failed in Ireland and Spain and Greece because they didn't do enough of it. They may have slowed government growth, but they needed to throw it into reverse and gun the engine.

So I'm left arguing that Obama's stimulus policies have saved us from a worse fate (Europe's), while also arguing that we're not doing enough and haven't done enough to really break us out of this mess, which I blame on the Republicans.

On the other hand....