In the last quarter of 2008, a major financial crisis spread from the United States to the global economy. The Federal Reserve created hundreds of billions of dollars and injected them into banks and the financial system. It aggressively reduced the federal funds rate to less than 1 percent by early November. Nothing much happened because the banks and other parts of the financial system simply held onto most of the money that the Fed put into the economy because they perceived the risk of loans not being repaid was too great to expand them by much. As evidence that monetary policy was ineffective, the actual federal funds rate that banks charge each other fell as low as 0.22 percent by November, well below the official 1 percent target rate. Politicians talked about tax cuts to stimulate the economy as well as increases in spending on such things as infrastructure (roads and bridges). Why was there a revival of Keynesian fiscal policy?