  Basically, he says, in typical times, it would be the job of
the central bank to act independently to counter governments
that are borrowing and spending so much that they're causing
inflation.  But in a liquidity trap, the job of the central bank
is to row in the same direction, and do everything it can to
facilitate inflation and spending, even if on paper that seems
irresponsible.  It's a big paper, and we're still going through
it, but one thing he cites in there is another paper by
economists Jacopo Ponticelli and Hans-Joachim Voth called
Austerity and Anarchy: Budget Cuts and Social Unrest in Europe,.
1919-2009 (.pdf), which explores the link between, as the title
states, austerity and social unrest.  What Ponticelli and Voth
found, looking back over budget cutting over that 90 year
period, is that the relationship between austerity and social
unrest (riots, attempted revolutions, and even assassinations)
is pretty clear.  Not only that, but the size of the cuts bear a
close relationship to the volume