Why The Stimulus?
Short answer: as a slush fund to reward supporters, and provide a pathway for kick-backs.
Obama reached into the pockets of every man, woman, and child in America and stole $2,459!
Wise move?
It certainly was not an anodyne for the economic disease that afflicted America.
1. First of all....the Stimulus didn't work. Even Obama said this: "Its not growing quite as fast as we would like, because after a financial crisis, typically theres a bigger drag on the economy for a longer period of time."
Remarks by the President at a Facebook Town Hall | The White House
a. Reinhart and Rogoff tried to support this fabrication in their book, "This Time Is Different."
b. Bill Clinton went even further: "At a recent Democratic fundraising event, former President Bill Clinton did his level best to explain away the slow growth and high unemployment of the Obama era. "If you go back 500 years," said Mr. Clinton, "whenever a country's financial system collapses, it takes between 5 and 10 years to get back to full employment. If you go back for the last 200 years, when buildings had been widely owned by individuals and companies, if there's a mortgage collapse it almost always takes 10 years." Bubba's History Lesson - WSJ.com
And there's a man whose word one can count on.
(Sigh) I'm always so disappointed when a liars pants dont actually catch on fire.
2. "Neither historical data nor recent international comparison support Reinhart's and Rogoff's claim about the weakness of recoveries after financial crises."
Lott, "At The Brink," p. 113.
a. "A large contraction in output tends to be followed on the average by a large business expansion; a mild contraction, by a mild expansion."
Milton Friedman, "The Monetary Studies of the National Bureau," chapter 12, in "The Optimum Quantity of Money and Other Essays."
b. "since the 1880's, the average annual growth rate of real GDP during financial recoveries from financial crisis recession was 8%, while the growth rate from non-financial crisis recessions was 6.9%."
Bardo and Haubrich, "Deep Recessions, Fast Recoveries, and Financial Crises: Evidence From the American Record," Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, June 2012. http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/workpaper/2012/wp1214.pdf
c. "U.S. history provides no support for linking low employment and high unemployment in the current recovery with the financial crisis of 20072008." The Financial Crisis and Recovery: Why so Slow? - September/October 2011 - Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
3. A bright guy like Obama.....didn't he know the results of Keynesian 'Stimulus'??? Gee,...maybe he figured other nations used it so......
a. A number of nations don't use the same methodology to calculate unemployment as our BLS uses....but Eurostat provides labor force participation, the percentage of working age population that is working: countries suffering financial crisis fared very differently.
b. So.....let's see how the 'Stimulus' worked out:
" U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1979" U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1979
4. "Although Reinhart and Rogoff put the United States and Canada into different classifications, the two countries' unemployment rates rose in lock step from August 2008 until February 2009, when the stimulus was passed in the United States. ...It was only after the United States enacted the stimulus that the two countries economic fortunes began to diverge. After that, Canada began to substantially outperform the US in job creation, the supposed point of the stimulus.
In the US, unemployment rose to 10.1 % by October 2009, and remained at least at 9.5% for the next 14 months. Canadian unemployment peaked at 7.7 % in July and August of 2009, and has been falling ever since.
Lott, "At The Brink," p. 102-103.
a. When the American unemployment rate in September 2011 was stuck at 9.1 %, Canada's had fallen to 6.3%. The US had increased by 1.3 % since Obama became President, while Canadian unemployment had already fallen below its January 2009 level. Lott, Op. Cit.
b. In January 2009, prior to the Obama Stimulus, the WSJ had surveyed economic forecasters. They predicted an increase of 0.8 % in unemployment by December of 2009....if no Stimulus!
Instead, 4 months after the Stimulus...it had climbed by 2.1 %, while in Canada....up 1 %. Lott, Op. Cit.
So...which is it?
Obama is dumb as a stump......or....
...he has something other than recovery planned for America?
Keynesianism will never die for the simple reason that it gives politicians a reason, an excuse, to spend money.....and disguise the reason for the spending.
Short answer: as a slush fund to reward supporters, and provide a pathway for kick-backs.
Obama reached into the pockets of every man, woman, and child in America and stole $2,459!
Wise move?
It certainly was not an anodyne for the economic disease that afflicted America.
1. First of all....the Stimulus didn't work. Even Obama said this: "Its not growing quite as fast as we would like, because after a financial crisis, typically theres a bigger drag on the economy for a longer period of time."
Remarks by the President at a Facebook Town Hall | The White House
a. Reinhart and Rogoff tried to support this fabrication in their book, "This Time Is Different."
b. Bill Clinton went even further: "At a recent Democratic fundraising event, former President Bill Clinton did his level best to explain away the slow growth and high unemployment of the Obama era. "If you go back 500 years," said Mr. Clinton, "whenever a country's financial system collapses, it takes between 5 and 10 years to get back to full employment. If you go back for the last 200 years, when buildings had been widely owned by individuals and companies, if there's a mortgage collapse it almost always takes 10 years." Bubba's History Lesson - WSJ.com
And there's a man whose word one can count on.
(Sigh) I'm always so disappointed when a liars pants dont actually catch on fire.
2. "Neither historical data nor recent international comparison support Reinhart's and Rogoff's claim about the weakness of recoveries after financial crises."
Lott, "At The Brink," p. 113.
a. "A large contraction in output tends to be followed on the average by a large business expansion; a mild contraction, by a mild expansion."
Milton Friedman, "The Monetary Studies of the National Bureau," chapter 12, in "The Optimum Quantity of Money and Other Essays."
b. "since the 1880's, the average annual growth rate of real GDP during financial recoveries from financial crisis recession was 8%, while the growth rate from non-financial crisis recessions was 6.9%."
Bardo and Haubrich, "Deep Recessions, Fast Recoveries, and Financial Crises: Evidence From the American Record," Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, June 2012. http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/workpaper/2012/wp1214.pdf
c. "U.S. history provides no support for linking low employment and high unemployment in the current recovery with the financial crisis of 20072008." The Financial Crisis and Recovery: Why so Slow? - September/October 2011 - Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
3. A bright guy like Obama.....didn't he know the results of Keynesian 'Stimulus'??? Gee,...maybe he figured other nations used it so......
a. A number of nations don't use the same methodology to calculate unemployment as our BLS uses....but Eurostat provides labor force participation, the percentage of working age population that is working: countries suffering financial crisis fared very differently.
b. So.....let's see how the 'Stimulus' worked out:
" U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1979" U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1979
4. "Although Reinhart and Rogoff put the United States and Canada into different classifications, the two countries' unemployment rates rose in lock step from August 2008 until February 2009, when the stimulus was passed in the United States. ...It was only after the United States enacted the stimulus that the two countries economic fortunes began to diverge. After that, Canada began to substantially outperform the US in job creation, the supposed point of the stimulus.
In the US, unemployment rose to 10.1 % by October 2009, and remained at least at 9.5% for the next 14 months. Canadian unemployment peaked at 7.7 % in July and August of 2009, and has been falling ever since.
Lott, "At The Brink," p. 102-103.
a. When the American unemployment rate in September 2011 was stuck at 9.1 %, Canada's had fallen to 6.3%. The US had increased by 1.3 % since Obama became President, while Canadian unemployment had already fallen below its January 2009 level. Lott, Op. Cit.
b. In January 2009, prior to the Obama Stimulus, the WSJ had surveyed economic forecasters. They predicted an increase of 0.8 % in unemployment by December of 2009....if no Stimulus!
Instead, 4 months after the Stimulus...it had climbed by 2.1 %, while in Canada....up 1 %. Lott, Op. Cit.
So...which is it?
Obama is dumb as a stump......or....
...he has something other than recovery planned for America?
Keynesianism will never die for the simple reason that it gives politicians a reason, an excuse, to spend money.....and disguise the reason for the spending.
