Romer: Impact of stimulus will level off

Tacoma News Tribune ^ | 10/22/09 | JIM KUHNHENN

[Slings and Arrows]

o/~ We’re no strangers to looooove... ~\o

[anglian]

“Christina Romer, said Thursday that the $194 billion already spent gave a jolt to the economy that contributed to - “growth in the second and third quarters of the year.” As to Romer’s contention that the stimulus “expanded the economy in the second and third quarters of this year,”
********For the stimulus to have “expanded the economy,” there first has to be a recorded economic expansion. The trouble is that the Bureau of Economic Analysis tells us that the economy contracted during the second quarter by 0.7%.
http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=1&FirstYear=2008&LastYear=2009&Freq=Qtr AP Waters Down Impact of Romer’s ‘Stimulus Has Had Biggest Impact’ Remark, Ignores Other Howlers
Romer’s prediction that the unemployment rate will stay so high for so long may be the most specific and gloomy prediction that has come from an administration spokesperson about persistent unemployment. I submit that its relevance to readers would have justified its placement well above the eighth paragraph. I daresay that in a Republican administration an unemployment prediction such as Romer’s would have been part or all of the story’s headline.

Finally, let’s get to Romer’s continuation of the administration’s tired claims about jobs “created or saved.” As I showed in early December 2008 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I could not find a single instance during the presidential campaign where candidate Obama promised in any possible variation of the phrase to “create or save” jobs. He always said that his policies would “create” them. The phraseology magically and dishonestly transformed into “create or save” within weeks of the election and has been employed with almost no challenge from the establishment media in the ten or so months that have since transpired. As I noted in that December post, “Old Media’s failure to note this shift is journalistic malpractice that would never occur during a Republican presidency.” That malpractice continues.

The laughable imprecision of Romer’s “created or saved” claim (”600,000 and 1.5 million”; are you kidding me?) virtually proves how utterly foolish and unprovable the administration’s assertions have been all along. The establishment press’s adoption and continued parroting of those “created and saved” assertions demonstrates how generally valid a characterization of them as apparatchiks really is.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/10/24/ap-waters-down-impact-romers-stimulus-has-had-biggest-impact-remark-igno

[Republic of Texas]

Don’t kid yourself. It’s going to start slow and then peter out.