Posted on 05/18/2009 1:31:21 PM PDT by reaganaut1
When the Obama stimulus plan was proposed, the president's economic team put out a report in January 2009 that purported to show what would happen with and without the fiscal stimulus. The chart above is from page four that report, together with the actual results over the past couple months. As you can see, the actual outcome is significantly worse than the projection with the stimulus plan and is, in fact, roughly on track with what was projected without the stimulus.
What does this mean? One interpretation is that the fiscal stimulus has failed to achieve what Team Obama thought it would. Another interpretation is that the baseline was worse than they believed at the time. I am confident the report authors would adopt the second interpretation. If so, that fact is consistent with what I said in a previous post: In light of the shifting baseline, it is impossible to hold the administration accountable for whether its policies are achieving their intended effects.
To be clear, this lack of accountability is not a feature on this specific administration but is, instead, a reflection of the inherent uncertainties associated with macroeconomics. The administration, however, has not been particularly forthright in admitting to this lack of accountability. Indeed, the act of releasing quarterly reports on how many jobs have been "created or saved" gives the illusion of accountability without the reality.
BHO : “Let them eat cake”.
“Looking at the graph on Mankiw’s blog, the unemployment rate in March and April has been slightly higher than what Obama’s economists projections of the unemployment rate with NO stimulus”
Right, and as Mankiw implies, we can fully expect The One to blame this all on Bush (i.e., the mess we inherited was worse than we thought) once it becomes clear that reality has almost exactly tracked their January predictions for what would happen without their “skillful” efforts to stimulate the economy. Sadly, a public bamboozled enough to have elected this clown isn’t likely to see through his efforts to tap dance around such inconvenient truths.
Obama’s entire campaign was based on providing the illusion that he knows what he’s doing and can fix all our problems. In truth he has no idea what he’s doing and is making things worse rather than better. The only question is when the American voters will wake from their slumber and decide to toss him and the rest of his Chicago gang out of the WH.
Without any statistical analysis, I would say that the problem is that the stimulus is not working (and will not) to create/save jobs, and all of the other economic policies coming out in the past 4 months have only added to the fear and domino effect of job loss, contraction by employers. But I did not get some huge consulting fee for that, it is JMHO.
Are you looking for a job?
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