Will a 'stimulus' package revive the U.S. economy?

There's been a lot of talk about using a so-called "stimulus package" to revive the U.S. economy. But the Japanese tried a huge stimulus in the 1990s, investing in infrastructure projects, and it didn't save their economy.

So why would it work in the U.S.?

Daily Voice editor Keith Boykin, and Michael Farr of Farr, Miller & Washington, both CNBC contributors, discussed that question this week on CNBC, along with Andy Stevenson, a finance advisor at the Center for Market Innovation at the National Resources Defense Council.

Boykin argued that a "rare consensus" of liberal and conservative economists now favor a stimulus package, including left-leaning economist Paul Krugman and right-leaning economist Martin Feldstein, former chairman of Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers.

There is not much good news to anticipate for the market in coming months, said Farr. "Anything good is going to come as a fabulous surprise," he said. "In the equation, you got to go with government," he added. But Farr also warned that the Japanese attempt at government intervention failed.

Japan spent $700 billion in that country in the 1990s and it didn't rescue the economy. "Spending the money in Japan just isn't all that effective," Farr said.

"It's the way that they spent the money," Boykin responded. "They didn't spend the money wisely," he said, arguing that Obama would "target his investments."

"They spent a trillion dollars on basically nothing but bridges to nowhere," Stevenson added. "Japan really invented the bridge to nowhere concept," said Stevenson, who lived in Japan for 8 years and traded in the market for almost 20 years.

So how should a U.S. stimulus package be structured?

"There's a lot of ways to spend it that are going to build bridges to places we want to go," Stevenson said. "I think that President-elect Obama has made that point as well, that there will be bridges being built in terms of putting people to work in construction and other areas, but there are also kind of greener, more useful solutions out there that will actually get us to that next level."

Stevenson cited energy efficiency, creating an energy grid that can handle solar and wind energy technologies.

See the full video here.