The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank held its annual research symposium at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming this week. The focus was on the limits of monetary policy. The challenge faced by central bankers is that since the Great Depression, the world has faced deflationary pressures from overcapacity. Oil prices have plummeted, Chinese steel floods the global markets and workers remained frustrated with low wages and finding full-time work. Central bankers have run into a problem because their primary tool of interest rate policy to stimulate the economy has run into the limit of zero nominal interest rates. At zero, they are essentially giving away money. But investment remains stuck on low. And one way to stir the economy, to prompt inflation that gives the room of rising prices for firms to make profitable investments, isn’t happening.

The luncheon speaker was economics Nobel laureate Christopher Sims. Sims is famous for the theory of rational expectations, which many conservative economists love because it gives little role to fiscal policy, except to keep the federal debt and deficits in check. It gives a modest role to monetary policy: have a strongly stated transparent policy to set interest rates to rise to beat back inflation and fall if the inflation rate falls. Conservatives like this because it coincides with a small government and laissez-faire attitude toward business.

But Sims gave a clear prescription that the only way to get out of the rut the economy is stuck in is for the government to run a very sizeable deficit and to announce that it will be big enough to generate inflation and the deficit will be paid off by the rising revenues that the inflation will produce. This creates a rare consensus among economists. Sims' fellow Princeton economist and Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, has said this same thing. Normally economists are chided for offering "on the one hand, on the other hand" kinds of advice. But here, both hands, from opposite ends of modeling the economy, agree.

Earlier this year, Catherine Mann, chief economist to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, made the same plea to the member countries of the OECD. The International Monetary Fund, also has pushed for the United States to do more fiscal stimulus.

Sims went further, that the best monetary policy would be for central bankers whom he characterizes as the best assemblage of objective economists independent of political persuasion, to explain to any and every one, the best way out is for people to expect when the economy is stuck in this position of no inflation and very slow growth that the fiscal authorities will step in and use deficit spending to restore inflationary expectations. And because it may well be that people don’t understand or believe that fiscal stimulus is needed, a tax cut may not do the trick, since people may save instead of spend the tax savings.

This is a clear consensus for the type of massive spending on infrastructure called for by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. But this is a call to re-inflate the economy as well. So that means the infrastructure should not be balanced by tax increases, but instead to use the bump up in tax revenue that comes when incomes rise because of inflation.

Most people are used to being told deficits are bad. Inflation is bad. In the 1980s, the U.S. economy was shocked out of rising inflation by the Federal Reserve deliberately crashing the economy and raising unemployment. This is a call for a similar shock, but by fiscal authorities to re-inflate the economy to full employment. It is time Americans learned a new economic lesson.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka gave an inspiring speech to the Nevada State AFL-CIO's 60th Annual Constitutional Convention yesterday. Some key excerpts and reactions to the speech:

"If you wanna know how Trump really feels about workers, ask the brave workers at Trump Hotel" Pres @RichardTrumka pic.twitter.com/R9HsM6mJ9x

— Nevada State AFL-CIO (@NVAFLCIO) August 24, 2016

Trumka said:

Listen, nobody needs to tell working people in this state about the union advantage. Collective bargaining transformed Las Vegas, and lifted up the entire entertainment industry. Across Nevada, each and every one of you continues to show us how unionism works. You do it in the building trades. You do it in our schools, hospitals, grocery stores, factories and too many places to name.

When we stand together, wages go up. Consumers have more money to spend. Employers feel competitive pressure to do better for their workers. That’s the strength of collective bargaining and collective action. We have the power to set off a race to the top.

We raise the bar in politics, too. When you and your members get onto the front lines, we build momentum for our issues and elect candidates who share our working family values....

Working people are winning the debate. Now it’s time to win some elections!

We can do it, if we stand together. We need each other. We need your mobilization and groundwork.

We know unity. We practice solidarity. When we stand together, no one can turn us aside.

We built the middle class once, and we’ll do it again.

We build the bridges and the factories. We bake the bread and serve it, too. We drive the rigs and carry the loads. We do it all. We do what it takes. We answer the call. We wake our country up every single day, and we tuck her into bed at night. We don’t mind hard work. We do it with pride. We won’t be faced down or pushed around, and we will NOT be denied....

If you want to know where Donald Trump really stands, ask the brave men and women at Trump Tower in Las Vegas. First, Trump hired a union-busting firm to discourage workers from organizing. The workers won anyway. Then, Trump refused to recognize the union. He dragged his feet. He filed an appeal. He did everything except bargain a first contract. Sisters and brothers, if you actively block our fundamental right to speak up together for better wages and benefits, you will never, ever, ever get our support.

Donald Trump is profoundly unfit to be president. That’s why on November 8th, 2016, working people are going to turn the tables, and tell him, “You’re fired!”...

It seems like yesterday I was in the backyard with my son when he was just 3 or 4 years old. His grandfather had gotten him one of those battery-operated Jeeps. He and his buddy, Chad, were driving around in the backyard.

I was out there too—talking on the phone about what else—the union. Rich must have overheard me, because he drove up and said: “Dad, what’s a union?”

So I told him to try to push his Jeep up the hill. He strained and struggled and eventually got stuck. Then I told his friend Chad to give him a hand. Working together, they were able to do it. I looked right at my son and said: “That’s a union.”

Today, working people are climbing up our own hill. Wages are still too low. Benefits are still too few. And the economic rules remain skewed toward the wealthy few.

We have the power to change that.

I can still recall the first time I saw what state-sanctioned discrimination looked like.

Growing up in rural Kentucky in the first half of the 20th century, I witnessed firsthand the extreme measures that elected officials would take to prevent African-American men like my father from voting.

They made him guess the number of beans in a jar. Regardless of how many beans there were, his answer was always wrong.

They made him count straws pulled from a homemade broom. No matter how many straws they had pulled, his answer was always wrong.

Then they made him read the entire U.S. Constitution. Even though my father couldn’t read, we helped him and other men in the church memorize every word. He recited it verbatim to those election officials, yet they claimed he had mispronounced a word.

Again, always wrong. Again, not eligible to vote.

When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, I had hoped we had seen the last of those tactics—of American citizens being denied their most basic right to vote because of what they looked like, what they sounded like, or where they came from.

It pains me to see that history is repeating itself yet again. Thanks to a 2013 Supreme Court decision overturning a key portion of the Voting Rights Act, 20 states will have restrictions in place this November making it harder for residents to vote.