I was mainstream Republican in 2008. My first econ blog was Greg Mankiw's.

But there was a comment of mine on Marginal Revolution in 2008. I asked, basically, if we need to create inflation, why not just have the Fed print money and deposit it? https://twitter.com/conorsen/status/1288461428412874754

I meant it as a "crazy" thought experiment. The only replies were like "Then we'll become Zimbabwe." Truly the only econ thoughts with mainstream significance was Austrian, Keynesian "shovel-ready" spending, and weird RBC-type convoluted thinking of freshwater economists.

Not that Austrian Business Cycle was mainstream in econ departments, but it *was* mainstream in popular discourse. Low interest rates in 2001-03 was commonly blamed for subprime mortgages mostly underwritten in 2005-06. Not just by Ron Paul fans either.

For the part of the left, Krugman was the standard-bearer. He correctly said the stimulus was too small, but he erred in only focusing on infrastructure projects. I remember his book suggesting big spending on climate change projects. Which isn't bad, but very dumb politically.

Krugman's writing was also wrong in focusing on raw size of deficits. Scott Sumner at least framed an argument around expectations. A payroll tax cut stimulus which only cost $300 billion but effectively raised expectations and NGDP is more effective than $800 billion which...

does not bring NGDP or NGDP expectations back up.

Sumner's blind spot was a quasi-magical effect of Fed pronouncements changing reality. In retrospect, QE2 and QE3 were effective because big market players like Bill Gross were wrong about their direct effects.

I've personally gone from standard Republican economic thinking to strict Market Monetarism to a sort of Keynesianism, at least at zero lower bound.

What's funny to me is that my dumb 2008 comment on MR turned out to be the simple answer staring us in the face. /fin