Insanity Thy Name Is Stimulus
by Big Dog on Sep 6, 2010 at 12:41 Political
One definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different result. If this definition is accurate then Barack Obama is insane. He and his Democrats have spent nearly a trillion dollars on a so called stimulus package that was touted as the thing we needed to save the economy and create jobs. We are more than 18 months into it and the unemployment rate is rising while the economy continues to teeter on complete collapse.
Obama spent money we did not have with lots of promises that it would work. He and his sock puppets continue to tell us that we are going in the right direction and that things are working despite all evidence to the contrary. The so called Summer of Recovery and been a Summer of Stagnation and the fall looks to be even worse.
So what does Obama want to do? Why spend MORE money on stimulating the economy. Obama wants 50 BILLION more dollars to stimulate the economy even though the 787 BILLION dollars dedicated to this effort has failed.
Vowing to find new ways to stimulate the sputtering economy, President Barack Obama will call for long-term investments in the nation’s roads, railways and runways that would cost at least $50 billion.
The infrastructure investments are one part of a package of targeted proposals the White House is expected to announce in hopes of jump-starting the economy ahead of the November election. Obama will outline the infrastructure proposal Monday at a Labor Day event in Milwaukee.
The original Stimulus was supposed to provide for these things. The “shovel ready” projects were supposed to be in the infrastructure and provide all the Obama union supporters with jobs right out of the starting gate. Instead, the money has gone to pay off other special interests and has provided no stimulus just as many of us had predicted.
We do not need more stimulus. Throwing more money we do not have at a problem that the original money did not fix is insane.
Obama is trying to use money we do not have and that will have to be repaid by taxpayers to win the midterm election. He wants to throw this money at the problem in hopes that things will get better in time to turn the election around. This simply will not happen and it shows how naive and inexperienced he really is. He does not understand the economy and he has no idea of the actual mood of the electorate.
If this were a wonderful idea it might pass because Obama’s Democrats still control Congress. However, many of his Democrats are fighting for their political lives because they marched lock step with Obama on his agenda. These Democrats chose party over principle and over constituents who did not want the Stimulus (or Health Care and Financial Reform) and now those very Democrats are avoiding these items like the plague because they do not want to be associated with the Obama agenda. They know it will mean the end of their time in Congress.
With that in mind, it is not likely they will vote to spend more money in a fashion that is opposed by the electorate.
Of course if they are reelected they will do it. They might also try in a lame duck session of Congress but we should be able to stop that.
In any event, Obama is insane if he thinks more of the same will produce different results.
A prediction; It will not take long before a progressive comments touting how wonderful the Stimulus has been and that it has been successful. Anyone making that claim is as brain damaged as Joe Biden.
Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: Democrats, insanity, lies, Obama, stimulus
I don’t think a March on The Capitol will stop a MAD DUCK session from passing anything it wants to.
WHY ARE DEMS IN STUNNED DISBELIEF?
Here we go again with a liberal (aka secular socialist) administration failing miserably to manage the American economy.
They are also failing in foreign policy, the other demo-lib fatal flaw area, but let’s put that aside.
The fawning diaper-changing media repeaters are also slipping into disbelief while looking for their smear gun.
The arrogant smiling lefties can always campaign with lofty utopian promises and effortlessly smear, its how they roll.
Their Party has controlled America’s purse strings since January 2007. What’s all this summer tension about?
This democrat disbelief has three faces. The 1st face is this cadre of kooks never had any real working world experience (a common trait in demo admins)…
the 2nd face, this gaggle of radicals was taught by angry socialists their entire life that secular socialism was superior to anything else…they are true believers now in denial, confusion yada yada…hence the bold in your face lying.
and the 3rd face, the current crop of Alinsky-ites or Castro-ites totally rejects what actually happened under Carter and Reagan.
Obama’s “huddle of the clueless” spun economic history in their minds so the greatest good is huge ultra-powerful gov-meant with high taxes and the greatest evil is to cut taxes and the size or power of gov-meant. Anything to the contrary is simply evil or wrong.
Anyone or any administration that was contrary to this dogma simply lied about the millions of new jobs and lower debt because the very concept is an evil wrong that SIMPLY CAN’T EVER HAVE HAPPENED!
Now, true to form, the Obama-ites are convinced they can avoid blame or shift it plus keep spouting financial nonsense for many months to come. Who are they kidding? Thinking voters KNOW secular socialism sux.
I think things that would normally pass might not since we have enough Senate votes to stop anything, at least for a while. Perhpas if Republicans will be taking the majority they might actually hold together long enough to keep anything from being passed.
Sorry to tell you again. The stimulus did exactly what it said it would do. It raised GDP about to the level it was predicted it would and it created or saved close to 2 million jobs.
Now, the funny thing here is that in all the smoke you blow in denial of the positive aspects of the recovery, you cite not one source that backs that up.
On the contrary, here is an interesting article from WSJ, USA Today, and ABC which talks about how a majority of surveyed economists believe the stimulus boosted GDP and prevented job losses.
Why stop there though? There’s much more. The Council of Economic Advisers, CBO, Goldman Sachs, Global Insight, JP Morgan Chase, Macroeconomic Advisers, Moody’s all agree that the stimulus added between 1.7% and 4.6% to GDP since it passed and created or save 1.4 to 3.5 million jobs.
We’ve had 8 straight months of positive private sector job growth as well as 4 straight quarters of positive growth in GDP. We’re hurting still, no doubt, but we are in better shape with the stimulus than without it.
But by all means continue to lie to yourself and your readers when you call the stimulus a failure and suggest the economy continues to teeter on complete collapse. I’m sure it will help your side take back Congress so you can shut down the government and usher the 90’s back in. I’m so looking forward to impeachment hearings and the typical garbage from the GOP.
the 50 billion will probably produce more turtle tunnels- that is the moronic way the government thinks, right Adam?
Those would be from people beholden to the Democrats, like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as well as the others. It would be the CBO that said the health reform would save money and now says it would cost money.
The 7 MILLION jobs lost since Obama took office of course mean nothing. Not to mention that he blames it all on Bush when it all took place after Democrats took control of Congress. It is their fault.
I might also point out that you cannot prove that we would be better off without the stimulus. It is illogical. I can say that Germany is doing much better because it refused to play ball with Obama and other countries that did not go big on spending are coming out. Just like during the Great Depression, other countries are starting to do well while we continue to do stupid things to prolong our misery.
And don’t tell me the stimulus did what it was supposed to do. It did not keep unemployment below 8% and it did not even keep it below where they said it would be without the stimulus. It also did not create the numbers of jobs they said it would and that was supposed to be taking place now. They told us immediate and then changed it to longer when things got worse. And we have a net loss of jobs and GDP growth is dismal and keeps getting adjusted down.
And even if you could show a few jobs the cost per job is not worth it. We could be well on our way to recovery if we did not have this stimulus and the waste of money involved.
Perhaps these nearly 100 economists see it differently.
The stimulus was a failure. One only needs to look at Democrats to see it. If it worked they would be running on it, not from it. They fail to mention it and refuse to discuss it while campaigning. They know it was wrong, that people opposed it and that it did not work.
Keynesian economics does not work. It has never worked and it never will.
But you continue to lie to yourself and those who might read what you write. You can follow the regime and keep moving the goalposts each time they have failure and lie about the true intent of the stimulus.
The economy does continue to teeter on the verge of collapse. We are way over extended and we have no way to get the money we need to pay the bills. We are out of money and owe for generations to come. Once we have inflation we are going to be in real bad shape. Make no mistake, we will see inflation. You cannot keep printing money and not have it. History has shown us that though I know you are not big on history.
Usher the 90s in. Not a bad idea. Split government where Republicans came up with great ideas that Clinton followed (and took credit for) and made him look good. The economy was good under Republican control. It was not bad until Democrats took control in 2007. This takes into account the recession Bush inherited from Clinton and 9/11.
Democrats have screwed the pooch on this and the stimulus is yet another failure. It did not do what they said and that is why they are asking for more money. They need more money to do what they said they were going to do with the first money they spent.
“Those would be from people beholden to the Democrats, like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as well as the others. It would be the CBO that said the health reform would save money and now says it would cost money.”
So you deny JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and the CBO, but don’t forget the Council of Economic Advisers, Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers, and Moody’s. What makes them wrong and you right?
“The 7 MILLION jobs lost since Obama took office of course mean nothing.”
Don’t throw around inaccurate numbers. There have only been 4 million lost since January 2009. Nearly all of those loses came in 2009. We have had a net increase of 723,000 jobs in 2010 so far, with 763,000 created in the private sector this year.
“I might also point out that you cannot prove that we would be better off without the stimulus. It is illogical.”
Economists create models every day and the models show that the spending blunted the impact of the recession.
“And don’t tell me the stimulus did what it was supposed to do. It did not keep unemployment below 8% and it did not even keep it below where they said it would be without the stimulus.”
You’re stuck on repeat on that faulty statement, aren’t you? You know why the 8% is an invalid argument yet you keep using it.
“Perhaps these nearly 100 economists see it differently.”
Don’t confuse what they are saying in their letter. They are correct that job growth has been slow and the stimulus did not “spark” private sector job growth. Yet, they do not deal with the question of whether things would be better or worse without the stimulus and whether or not the stimulus increased GDP or aided job growth.
“You can follow the regime and keep moving the goalposts each time they have failure and lie about the true intent of the stimulus.”
Oh please. Please re-read (or finally read) the Romer-Berstein report on what they intended the stimulus to do and what they projected it’s impact to be. No one is moving the goal posts. You’ve just imagined the goal posts to be where they weren’t in the first place.
The 8% is not faulty, it is accurate and it uses their report. You apologists can change it and call it faulty but that does not make it so.
We need only look at countries where they did not do the stimulus.
And computer models? GIGO sort of like global warming and phony hockey sticks. You can make data say what you want depending upon your master. Ask Kos and his pollster.
I have shown you several times what the Report says and you reject it by telling me what you think they meant. The footnote is clear when it discusses what will happen without the stimulus.
You keep using politicfact and the other discredited fact checkers as if they will mean something to me.
Look who is behind them and you will know what they are designed to do. They are the propaganda arm of the progressive movement.
I know what was put out in the report and I know what the footnotes report. You can ignore it but the report is way off. It hit no marks and it did not deliver as promised.
I have to admit that you have learned your Alinsky well though. Keep it up and you might achieve the rank of Junior Community Organizer.
“I have shown you several times what the Report says and you reject it by telling me what you think they meant. The footnote is clear when it discusses what will happen without the stimulus.”
Nonsense. Paste the footnote you’re talking about again so we call all see how full of baloney you are.
“We need only look at countries where they did not do the stimulus.”
Like what? Germany, where they had no housing bubble? You’ve made arguments like this before and they’re weak. The economic situations do not compare.
“You keep using politicfact and the other discredited fact checkers as if they will mean something to me.”
You can’t tell me what’s wrong with their argument but you can call them biased and ignore it. Convenient. You used to put more effort into your arguments.
Sorry you do not appreciate the effort but I have come to the conclusion that no matter what is presented you will not see it or agree so I will reference what has been shown before and you can look it up.
I no longer worry about refuting them. They have been shown to be biased time and again.
Germany had no housing bubble? The world banks sure had lots of money in our bubble, a bubble manufactured by Socialist programs.
And we did not address Fannie and Freddie the two responsible for it.
They said (page 4) that GDP would increase 3.7% and we have not hit that. Then it touted the stimulus with this:
The table shows that we expect the plan to more than meet the goal of creating or saving 3 million jobs by 2010Q4. There are two important points to note, however: First, the likely scale of employment loss is extremely large. The U.S. economy has already lost nearly 2.6 million jobs since the business cycle peak in December 2007. In the absence of stimulus, the economy could lose another 3 to 4 million more. Thus, we are working to counter a potential total job loss of at least 5 million. As Figure 1 shows, even with the large prototypical package, the unemployment rate in 2010Q4 is predicted to be approximately 7.0%, which is well below the approximately 8.8% that would result in the absence of a plan.1
Second, as emphasized above, there is considerable uncertainty in our estimates: both the impact of the package on GDP and the relationship between higher GDP and job creation are hard to estimate precisely. In light of the substantial quarter-to-quarter variation in the estimates of job creation, we believe a reasonable range for 2010Q4 is 3.3 to 4.1 million jobs created.
They say that with the prototypical package UE would be 7% and it would be 8.8% in the absence. Then it discusses the variation in jobs created which will be from 3.3 to 4.1
The footnote (number 1 as indicated by the number 1 after the word “plan” above) indicates:
1 Forecasts of the unemployment rate without the recovery plan vary substantially. Some private forecasters anticipate unemployment rates as high as 11% in the absence of action.
This footnote, referenced from the paragraph above (and just before the graph) deals solely with unemployment in the ABSENCE of a recovery plan. It says that forecasts of the rate WITHOUT the plan vary substantially. Then it goes on to say that WITHOUT the plan it could be as high as 11%.
Nowhere does it discuss uncertainty with the stimulus. It asserts what UE will be with and without and then asserts that UE might be higher without the plan.
Now, people can go and read that and chime in but I defy you to find where that footnote mentions WITH the recovery.
Any sane person can see they asserted what it would be with and without, mentioned it could go even higher without in order to get it passed and they were wrong.
Period.
All items copied from the linked report in Adam’s comment.
Let me restate based on re-reading the report that the goal of the stimulus was to increase GDP by 3.7% and creating or saving 3,675,000 jobs. Given the fixed value of the package these are the hard numbers to go by in estimating the success or failure of the stimulus. When I stated numbers above they were inaccurate.
“I no longer worry about refuting them. They have been shown to be biased time and again.”
That’s a shame. Funny how all the valuable resources online that knock down all the silly things you say day in and day out are so biased as to no longer concern you. Colbert is still right after all these years.
“Nowhere does it discuss uncertainty with the stimulus.”
See, this is the exact conversation we had before. They state very clearly the following on page 3:
What makes you believe that the phrase “all of the estimates presented in this memo” means only the estimates dealing with the effects without the stimulus?
You chose to ignore that part of the report and focus on a specific endnote but even that is not without question. Surely you can understand how the variation in estimate of the effect without the stimulus causes variation in the estimate of effect with the stimulus, right? Those two things are directly related, are they not?
Think of it as dirt going into a hole. You estimate the size of the hole and you fix the amount of dirt you will put back in to fill it part way. Your estimate of the size was off but you still have the fixed amount of dirt to put in. This is exactly what has happened with the stimulus.
While not a 100% success, the stimulus has increased GDP comparably to the 3.7% they wanted and it has created or saved job levels comparably to the 3.6 million they estimated it would. The bad news is job losses and GDP contraction was worse than predicted so in turn the predicted impact is dampened.
At this point you either believe their prediction of the impact without it was spot on so the stimulus made it worse, or you believe they simply underestimated the depth of the recession and the stimulus was therefore not as effective. I wonder which you agree with more and I wonder if you have any evidence on which to base that stance.
Colbert is a comedian. But he could be right, PT Barnum sure was as shown by you and the followers of the messiah. The GDP has been nowhere near what they predicted (annualized is about 1.6% growth). As for the stimulus:
There is no way they created 3.5 million jobs. Don’t know where you got your numbers but the quoted item comes from a guy who use to work at the Dept of Labor.
Yes, GDP was falsely inflated after C4C and will level out. The annualized rate is 1.6% or about half of what they said.
Nobody said they created 3.5 million jobs. As I mentioned above, a handful of organizations and groups estimate the impact of jobs created or saved to be somewhere between 1.4 to 3.5 million jobs and the impact on GDP to be between 1.7% and 4.6%.
I know you lend credibility only to those who say the stimulus failed, but that is what these industry experts and economists believe.
And there is this.
As we have pointed out, saved jobs is a BS category and cannot be measured.
The number of jobs created will not rise until some kind of stability hits DC and employers know what to expect. They currently sit on a couple of trillion dollars they are not willing to invest in new employees until they know what kind of tax burden they will have.
Many are not willing to hire because of what the health care takeover will do to them.
In any event, the number of jobs created is well below the number predicted and the GDP is annualized at 1.6%. While a quarter might hit a high number they are annualized at 1.6% and many of the high numbers get revised down. We can also explain the high anomalies with C4C, Christmas, and home tax credits.
Now that they are gone the numbers are down.
I give credence to those who can look at the things like I do and conclude that by any measure it was a failure. Even if it created jobs, the cost per job is way to high and thus, a failure.
The only BS about saved jobs is from you and your side when you suggest they cannot be measured. Somehow while making it’s way through the right wing echo-chamber the idea of measuring saved jobs went from being difficult to simply impossible.
The truth is that measuring the results of the stimulus is not just about measuring how many jobs have been created since the stimulus passed and how much GDP has grown. It takes an estimate of state of the economy with and without the stimulus and reasonable assumptions of what a dollar spent does in terms of growth.
It’s not perfect and not all economists agree on the methodology or the results of course, but it’s hardly impossible as your side insists.
And to counter the idea that the cost was too high I’ll turn to Mark Zandi:
Sure it was a lot of money but I tend to agree with the economists that believe the stimulus was imperfect but necessary.
Of course there is no way to know if this is true and there is no way to measure jobs saved. When one considers what the regime said to use (if a dollar went to a job it was saved EVEN IF IT WAS NOT IN DANGER OF BEING LOST) then we know it is BS.
If the stimulus had not been done we would be in better shape. That statement is as valid as any to the contrary.
I just happen to have history on my side. Government spending money we do not have is a bad thing, worse than any cyclic turns of the economy.
And if the Dems had not blocked reform of Fannie and Freddie we might not have fallen as far. The same goes for making us lend money to people who can’t pay it back.
All because the Dems screwed up the economy once they took charge.
“If the stimulus had not been done we would be in better shape. That statement is as valid as any to the contrary.”
Except your statement has no factual basis now does it? You talk about history in abstract terms but you don’t have anything specific to speak for our current situation. The statement that the economy is better with than without the stimulus is supported by current economic data and the views of prominent economists.
It is supported by the VIEWS of the economists (and not by others I might add) but they cannot tell we would be better off or worse off if we had done nothing. Economic data does not support it because there is no data to show what we would have had if we did not do the stimulus. Can’t prove that one.
The only way would be to do nothing.
I know you are having trouble with this so let me put it another way.
How would you answer this?
Do you think we are better off since we went to war with Iraq and Afghanistan or we would have been better off by not going?
I don’t get it. Yes, we don’t know with 100% certainty how things would have gone had different actions been taken either in war or in economics. Yet, are you seriously suggesting that intelligent, informed individuals can’t make intelligent guesses, build models, and weigh evidence or history to make reasonable estimates of how things might have gone? It happens all the time in economics. It happens all the time in a lot of areas.
Yes, I understand guesses. I know there are estimates that differ and all are based on available information. People make educated guesses based on it.
But history is not on their side. The last time we did this we extended the Depression and made it a Great Depression and gave unprecedented power to the government under bastards like FDR.
Think Japan and its lost Decade. We are doing that stuff.
“The last time we did this we extended the Depression and made it a Great Depression and gave unprecedented power to the government under bastards like FDR.”
Still repeating revisionist history, I see.
I also wonder if you still feel the following is true: “Nowhere does it discuss uncertainty with the stimulus.”
I do not know what you are referring to.
Of course not. You’d never say something so easily proven false, would you? Not you…
I don’t know what context you are making the statement in.
If you mean the report, yes. It discusses the difficulty with making predictions but makes it clear that we must do those things OR ELSE we will be in deep doo doo.
And the only revisionist history over the Great Depression is what the progressives have been teaching for decades about the failures of FDR. Like Rahm, he used a crisis to institute policies that we have been paying for and that were Socialist and that are now going bankrupt because we cannot afford them. He bullied the SCOTUS and he threatened to expand it to get what he wanted to push his agenda.
We only came out of that because of the war but would have been out much earlier if we had not spent all the money.
Nothing good happened. Look at some of the people who were involved and how they came to realize they screwed up.
I am sure I sometimes say things that are proven false. Everyone I know does including you.
You tend to take things out of context. Case in point, the quote you asked about. It clearly is on reference to the END NOTE in the document. I clearly state that the note does NOT discuss uncertainty.
The note does not. You however, are applying the paragraph from something else and trying to say the note says otherwise.
I was clear that the note, the one pointed to directly in the document, does not discuss uncertainty and it does not.
So yes, I stand by it.