Like this:
…thanks to Barack Obama and democrats, the US Unemployment rate is worse today than if they never would have passed their stimulus package. The Obama Administration predicted the unemployment rate with and without President Obama’s stimulus package, the one that is supposed to “create or save” 3 million jobs.
Unfortunately, the red line shows the actual trend since the Stimulus was passed.
It wasn’t stimulus, it was scamulus. And it’s scandalous. Or it would be if we had a press that was a watchdog, rather than a lapdog, when Democrats are in power.
[Afternoon update]
Andy McCarthy noted Austan Goolsby’s dancing around this issue this morning, with two left feet:
I caught a panel on which Obama economic advisor Austin Goolsbee conceded that the administration had previously predicted unemployment would top out at around 8%, that it was now up to 9.4%, and that double-digit unemployment was a distinct possibility in the near future. Goolsbee didn’t resort to the administrations’s blather about “saving or creating jobs,” but he did repeat its fustian about how last month’s loss of 345,000 jobs (resulting in a half percentage point jump in the jobless rate) is somehow good news because it beat predictions (I don’t recall him saying whose) of even more dire loss numbers. It made me wonder why, if those predictions either existed or were serious, the Obama administration would have previously predicted that unemployment would top out at 8%?
Because they’re economically clueless, and willing to drive the economy deeply into a ditch if it will expand and entrench their political power?
[Monday morning update]
More thoughts from Stephen Green:
Let’s pretend for a moment that, god forbid, you break your arm. And somehow you end up with a team of doctors all trained at Obama University. As you lie there on the table in the ER, one doctor treats your arm by banging on the unbroken one with a ball-peen hammer. The second doctor takes the unusual course of setting your hair on fire. And the third one uses leaches.
Undeterred by your arm’s stubborn refusal to set, soon the doctors start blaming one another. And even though all of them are doing nothing but compounding your injury, none will take any blame. In fact, the louder you scream, the harder they go to work on you.
That, apparently, is what’s going on in the West Wing these days. Our economy is being managed by Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Howard.
It’s Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.
[Bumped]
And it’s scandalous. Or it would be if we had a press that was a watchdog, rather than a lapdog, when Democrats are in power.
Why do you need the press? The ARRA spending is all on recovery dot gov — you can investigate the “scandal” yourself. Of course if you do investigate you will find that there is no way that ARRA spending — some 6% of the fiscal 2009 deficit — is responsible for the increase in unemployment.
there is no way that ARRA spending — some 6% of the fiscal 2009 deficit — is responsible for the increase in unemployment.
Actually, there are lots of ways that it is. It sends a message to the markets that there will be no fiscal responsibility whatsoever from this administration, despite its Orwellian declarations otherwise, and as a result it’s already jacking up interest rates and beating down the value of the dollar, and wiping out business (and particularly small business) confidence, resulting in much less hiring. If there’s a recovery soon, it’s gong to be a very slow one.
And I note that you have no response to the fact that the administration was absolutely clueless as to the economic future, and that the prognostications for the effects of the porkulus at the time it passed were either nutty, or lies. There is no evidence that it has helped, and quite a bit that it has hurt, given the fact that things have worsened far beyond what was predicted had there been no porkulus bill. Why should we have any confidence whatsoever in the ability of this government to guide the economy?
I have no such confidence, but I don’t regard it as the government responsibility to “guide” the economy. The government’s job is to provide a stable legal and political basis for economic activity.
In that, it has failed, both in former President Bush’s and President Obama’s extraconstitutional actions.
I have no such confidence, but I don’t regard it as the government responsibility to “guide” the economy.
Nor do I. So the government is doing something it shouldn’t be doing, and it’s doing it very badly.
Why do you need the press?
Are you saying that there is no purpose to the Fourth Estate?
Written by objective government bureaucrats with nothing to hide, obviously.
I’m trying to work out if I want Obama and his plans to succeed because that would be good for all of us, or because it would annoy you even more.
I’m still leaning towards the first, but the more of this errant rot that you keep dredging up I might have to swing.
Good heavens man, you make the people you accused of Bush Derangement Syndrome look positively on an even keel!
By the way, how’s the oil price doing? I seem to recall you saying once that it was over priced at $48…
t sends a message to the markets that there will be no fiscal responsibility whatsoever from this administration
The message is the overall deficit, of which the ARRA is a very small part. Do you think the bond markets would be significantly happier if every dollar of ARRA spending was taken out of the DOD budget?
And I note that you have no response to the fact that the administration was absolutely clueless as to the economic future
Economic forecast proves imprecise, story at 11, following our investigation of dogs that bite men.
the prognostications for the effects of the porkulus at the time it passed were either nutty, or lies
You haven’t shown them to be either.
There is no evidence that it has helped
Yes, there is — I just rode over some fresh asphalt on I-89, and that pavement represents people collecting paychecks, suppliers selling equipment and supplies, etc. Those are real people and real companies being helped. Right now our economy needs those things more than it needs to trim a sliver off our mountain of IOUs (so we can borrow even more to deal with those workers being laid off, their home foreclosed, their suppliers bankrupt, etc.).
When Jack Lee was commenting here, Daveon was only the second most value-subtracting commenter. Now he’s been promoted.
Economic forecast proves imprecise
“imprecise…”?
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Those are real people and real companies being helped. Right now our economy needs those things more than it needs to trim a sliver off our mountain of IOUs (so we can borrow even more to deal with those workers being laid off, their home foreclosed, their suppliers bankrupt, etc.).
There’s a fallacy called “false choice.” You might want to look it up. It’s related to “straw man,” something at which you excel. Sadly, it’s not a very useful skill, except to the dimwitted.
There’s a vast difference between a Keynesian approach of building infrastructure and the complete crap we’re getting.
A trillion dollars of stimulous spent on roads, rails, ports, airports, spaceports, resource extraction, and power plants is just completely different from a trillion dollars blown on things like hiring 140,000 extra census workers to geotag every doorway in America. That isn’t “infrastructure.” There’s no way you can possibly expect for the economy to ever see a positive rate-of-return on a very large slice of the Set Money On Fire bill. Yet on Recovery.gov, the spending on ACORN is “infrastructure spending.” They don’t mean “This will provide a return”, but instead “We consider this a public good.”
I might concede that it is a public good – much like the upcoming war over health care – but is IS NOT INFRASTRUCTURE. So it has no actual stimulating effect according to the main Keynesian economists.
The bill would more properly be titled “The First Reparations Act of 2009.”
I’m trying to work out if I want Obama and his plans to succeed because that would be good for all of us, or because it would annoy you even more.
Nice. But do you have any measure you can point to that shows that Obama and his plans are succeeding.
By the way, how’s the oil price doing? I seem to recall you saying once that it was over priced at $48…
That is what you call successful? Don’t blame Rand. He’s not against off-shore oil drilling.
As I see it, the important thing to note is that the projected curves are projections by Obama staff, issued on January 10. Basically, if the “recovery package” were passed, good things would happen to the projected unemployment rates. These projections didn’t come true. They made some other claims. For example, that GDP would be almost 4% higher ($12.2 trillion in chained year 2000 dollars) in the fourth quarter of 2010 than without the recovery package. And that there would be 137.5 million employed people.
A clearer example of the myopia present in the above report is Appendix 1 that discusses the relative benefits of a permanent government spending increase and a decrease in taxation of the order of 1% of GDP. The conclusion is that the spending increase is a bit over 50% better.
The problems with these assumptions is that first, they don’t take into account the losses from opportunity costs imposed by taxation or the distortion of economic decision making (for a current example, the loaning of money is highly discouraged by current government policy). Second, they ignore that not all government spending results in the same multiplier. Feeding cronies and political allies won’t give the same return that higher highway spending would give.
Tax cuts would benefit the people who make good economic decisions. It seems reasonable to me that these people would in turn use that money efficiently to generate more wealth than a government could do with the same money (assuming here that the government spends mostly to encourage wealth building rather than some service that government traditionally provides).
But instead, they have this toy model that shows their approach works better than the alternative. I see no evidence cited to back this up. They admit, for example, that they don’t have a real model for the economic impact of tax reduction. I wonder why they even bothered to include this appendix.
“It’s Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.”
perfect.
I’ll have an essay up on that topic at PJM later this week.
Nice. But do you have any measure you can point to that shows that Obama and his plans are succeeding.
No, but that’s not what I asked. Thank you for playing though.
McGhee – it’s my pleasure. Any dose of reality to the politics portion of this blog are delivered as needed.
That is what you call successful? Don’t blame Rand. He’s not against off-shore oil drilling.
Again, thank you for playing but entirely pointless within the context of the statement.
Rand’s been talking down the oil price since it broke $40 a barrel and for some reason the market just doesn’t care.
Heck, anybody would think there was more to pricing than pure supply and demand eh?