W&L Economist Comments on Potential Impact of Government Shutdown (Audio)
In her role as an economist who studies money and banking, Washington and Lee University professor Linda Hooks believes there are no easy answers to the economic questions posed by a potential shutdown of the federal government.
As she notes in the audio clip above, a shutdown of two or three days might have minimal impact on the economy. But a longer shutdown, three weeks or more, will have some effect, especially when next quarter’s Gross Domestic Product numbers come out.
“The government, and the people, want the economy to continue to grow, but, over the longer term, our federal government has some real budget issues that it has to address,” she said. “Here’s a chance for them to address those issues, but the question really is whether or not now is the right moment to address them, or are we doing this too quickly and too early.”
A member of the W&L faculty since 1993, Hooks was an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas from 1991 to 1993. She is the author of “Bank Failures and Deregulation in the 80s” (Garland Press, 1993). She earned her B.A. at Louisiana State University-Baton Rouge and her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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