Silence! Angus is crafting a stimulus package.

Sadly, no, just a bunch of wonks. And now I'm throwing my hat into the ring. Mike "Okun's Razor" Sankowski has been posting in detail on this issue at DailyKos, and slightly less compulsively on his own blog. I responded on the latter on this issue thusly:

Here's my take on how big the stimulus package should be. The question I have for policymakers is: "How big does it have to be such that, if it fails, you will agree that it didn't work because the theory was flawed, not because the spend wasn't big enough?" That's how much should be spent.

If it fails because not enough was spent, the republicans will still attack it as too much spending. Lots of smart people will argue that no, there wasn't enough spending, but, sadly, they will no longer have much credibility with the public. Conversely, deficit spending backers should not be acting on faith and thus should be willing to set forth conditions under which we will admit we were wrong.