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Source: IFS
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Trade in services
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In the United States, the government followed a twopronged strategy to reverse the financial crisis: bail out
distressed financial institutions (lest they transmit their
failure to their creditors) and pump government money into
the economy (to stimulate business activity when private
loans were scarce). What emerged from the bailout was an
extraordinary degree of government involvement inand
sometimes even majority ownership ofthe private sector.
Altogether, the government by late 2009 had provided an
estimated $4 trillion to keep the financial sector afloat. Many
of the biggest bailout beneficiaries quickly paid the
government back, and the ultimate cost of the bailout to
taxpayers was estimated at only $1.2 trillion.
Congress in February handed Pres. Barack Obama the first
legislative triumph of his month-old presidency when it
enacted a $787 billion fiscal stimulus bill that comprised $288
billion in tax cuts and $499 billion in spending, most of it for
public-works programs such as school construction and
highway repair. Although Republicans groused that checks
for much of the $499 billion would be issued too late to do
any good, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said
that thanks to the tax measures, about three-quarters of the
full $787 billion would be spent in 18 months. Obama
claimed that the bill would create or preserve 3.5 million
jobs, a figure that many of his opponents called far too
optimistic.