[lkrubner]

This part of what you say is true:

"It repeatedly implored Congress to increase fiscal spending. That didn’t happen, so monetary policy had to attempt to compensate."

This part is not true:

"At least in America, we did a good job of this."

High unemployment should have been brought down in 2009 but instead did not come down till 2013. Labor force participation remains suppressed. Wages for men have been in decline for most of the period since 1973, and that only includes their monetary wages -- if you consider the decline in what's covered by health insurance, then the situation is even worse.

The situation since 1973 has been bad, and the situation since 2000 has been awful, and the USA has yet to show the political regeneration that will be necessary to turn this situation around and resume the broad based prosperity that the USA enjoyed during the mid-20th century.

[tasty_freeze]

> High unemployment should have been brought down in 2009 but instead did not come down till 2013

That doesn't match any graph I've seen. The unemployment rate shot up in 2008 and continued in early 2009, but from that point forward, it was a pretty regular, almost linear drop in the unemployment rate to today. Nothing special happened in 2013.

https://www.statista.com/chart/8974/us-unemployment-rate/