The Crash of 2007 -- 2010 destroyed $10 - $13 trillion of household wealth. Then "job creators" destroyed 8.5 million jobs. The two "stimuli" totaled less than $1 trillion. No way that little stimulus could offset loss of 8.5 million jobs and $10 trillion of wealth. Beyond the Treasury TARP's $700 billion bailout, the Federal Reserve (the Fed.) recapitalized the megabanks with $16.1 trillion in near 0% interest loans (GAO Report 11-696, 7/10 available online) or "only" $7.7 trillion (per Bloomberg News.) This enabled "too big to fail" (TBTF) banks to make super-profits relending the 0% money at commercial rates. Big corporations profited enormously and stock prices reflated. Banks now have $1.4 trillion in excess reserves at the Fed. and corporations, $2 trillion excess cash.
Corporations know people have lost enormous wealth. We can't buy things made by new hires. Lowering corporate taxes or repealing regulations can increase profits further, but not make businesses hire the unemployed. If 24 million human Americans remain unemployed or underemployed after TARP and $16.1 trillion "emergency assistance" to TBTF banks, it's strong confirmation that corporate welfare does not revive employment.
By the dominant Economic Theology of both parties, corporate demigods must be succored, human American citizens, sacrificed. Some banks may be TBTF, but "no-account" human Americans are too little to bail. The demigods have a permanent army of 12,000 lobbyist troops occupying the capital. They've got a death grip on the federal government. Only under such unverifiable theology could richly suborned Republicans bear the false witness that austerity in general welfare programs is needed now.
It is Unspeakable Heresy for the media to feature these numbers together as a front page headline. Demand and employment may never return to normal unless we jobless, house-poor human citizen people are given, through well paid jobs, a lot of replacement purchasing power. (See "19 million Jobs for U.S. Workers," online.) Inflation from massive job creation? Not with housing asset values and consumer credit still impaired, and 23% excess capacity, unless by monopolistic pricing. The longer the dogma is held, the greater the risk that the fragile, stagnant economy will be pitched, by a new war, a great rise in oil prices, a country default, a severe natural disaster or act of terrorism back into the Great Recession.
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