Op-ed in WSJ rolls out statistics to reveal how useless the vaunted stimulus was - even allowing some legitimacy for the old saw 'lies, damned lies, and statistics' it was obvious to anyone not benighted by partisan spin that that stimulus was a political play only faintly infused with a sound economic sensibility - it's shocking how little heat Obama has taken for this, because it wasn't simply an astounding misuse of public funds, it compounded the public's sense that things were out of control and the gov't was focused on the wrong things - in a crisis defined to no small extent by a psychological malaise driven by fear and doubt a stimulus that the public viewed as rushed, tainted by politics and of inflating debt to a seeming unmanageable degree only made things worse.
I do find it odd though that they couldn't figure out what any poor person could have told them - people spend money when they feel secure in their employment, even if it's a shitty job, as long as you feel it's not gonna disappear, you'll spend - if you're worried about paying the rent every month any little windfall you get, like from a gov't stimulus, you're gonna hoard it, not spend it. I guess they don't know this because most of them can't remember the last time they worried about paying the rent - although in the article they note that Milton Friedman understood this dynamic and believed gov't intervention should be all about stimulating business and by consequence long term employment.
I dunno - I know little about business theory, less about economics - but I felt from the get go that that stimulus bill was a load of crap - troubling that the media is so willing to think or outright pretend otherwise - remember during the reprehensible celebration by the press of Obama's first 100 days how the stimulus was lauded and trumpeted as evidence that the administration was firmly in control.
update: WH has released own numbers putatively showing one million jobs created or saved by stimulus - unfortunately most view the idea of 'saved jobs' as not demonstrable and therefore deliberately obfuscatory - in other words lies, damned lies and... WH statistics. [it never occurs to you that you denounce Obama with a blind enthusiasm similar to that with which his benighted supporters applaud him? No, no, absolutely not... a knack for knowing when others are in the wrong would verge on delusional if I wasn't always right, no?...]
