Of course, they also hired Krugman’s Mini-Me Bradford DeLong as well…

With the president still using the “Blame The Previous Administration” mantra, one is forced to ask him, “When do you become solely responsible for the economic situation in the United States, Mr. President?” It is a sorry affair when the president talks in meaningless platitudes while justifying his failed bailout policy. November 2012 can’t come soon enough.

The employment situation was much worse than what the data at the time (since revised, ie the red dots) showed, which may have lead to a different set of policy choices (or at least a better estimation going forward). This recession in fact did shed more jobs than economic models would predict for the GDP loss we suffered AND the recovery is creating less jobs than a similar GDP growth would predict. I personally think much of this has to do with productivity and technology (and throw some globalization in there for good measure) than any particular policy set, but that also implies that any stimulus was likely the wrong answer to our employment problem.

Also, we need to be careful about throwing stones here, as I seem to recall that Paul Ryan’s budget plan came attached with an analysis that predicted a 2.7% unemployment rate by 2017.

Republicans added $500 billion (and more) to the Federal debt every year after Bush got elected. And they got thrown out because of it.

Democrats have set the goal higher, adding more than a $trillion each year of the Obama administration.

The unemployment rate in the United States was last reported at 9.1 percent in May of 2011. From 1948 until 2010 the United States’ Unemployment Rate averaged 5.70 percent reaching an historical high of 10.80 percent in November of 1982 and a record low of 2.50 percent in May of 1953.

__Trading Economics

Bush enjoyed a Republican Congress … Obama had a Democrat Congress for two years. Now it’s split.

“Natural” unemployment is near 6% … despite optimistic projections, it’s never going to get below that for long.

Congress has a choice: continue spending money that doesn’t exist, and bail out the banks and unions (and Doctors, Insurance Companies, and others) that fund elections, or own up to The People they purport to represent, and balance a budget.

I thought the largest budget deficit under Bush was ~$400 billion, in what would have been his next-to-last budget, except that the Democratic Congress pushed the 2009 budget back past the election so far that it was Obama that was President to actually sign it by the time it got passed, 6 months late.

I really appreciate your article, and I love it, but to be honest, it was very similar to my latest diary entry, written 4 days ago on June 3rd

http://www.redstate.com/hardcorepreppie/2011/06/03/obama-stated-that-unemployment-would-go-no-higher-than-8/

My article stated that unemployment was supposed to go no higher than 8% and it focused its attention mostly on Christina Romer.

I’m not saying that the idea was necessarily taken from me, but this has happened to me several times by different authors and bloggers here on RS. I guess I feel that if my blogs are good enough to be inspiration for other, larger articles, I’d love to have a shot at writing an article for the main page/main feed. Please let me know what you think.

The liberals are constantly claiming the economy would have been worse without the stimulus. Yesterday I heard Steve Rattner saying ALL the economic models show we would be at 13% unemployment without the stimulus.

Why have I never heard anyone make the point that THE RECESSION ENDED (June 2009) AND UNEMPLOYMENT PEAKED BEFORE THE STIMULUS HAD TIME TO KICK IN!!!!

Look at the chart here. Only 107 billion dollars was spent in all of 2009. Most of the money was designed to be spent in 2010 to juice the economy before the elections.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nSTO-vZpSgc/SY1KMO58iSI/AAAAAAAAFj8/pXvjoLutRZU/s1600-h/Spending+Over+Time.png

Market economics isn’t about what is going on in the present. It is part psychology, and based on what the participants believe the future will look like. We did not have to wait two years to find out if “the stimulus” worked or would ever work. If it was ever going to work, the markets would have responded the day it was brought up. Instead, most kept going down like there was no bottom in sight for weeks after the bill passed. There was no need to quibble over a percentage here or there regarding the depth of employment figures; by the way the markets behaved, one could tell it would be really bad.

Of course it is beyond the scope of most liberals I know to be able to read markets when the result conflicts with their pet projects or markets aren’t going along with them. Their solutions are hammers looking for nails, and when it doesn’t fit, they shove it, and if it breakes they write it off as needing to be replaced anyway. They have very little to fear from failure because the liberal circle sustains them all just for spouting things that make no sense, that everyone else will eventually pay for. It is easy for them to forget that all of what they do have real consequences, financial tragedy playing out in housholds across the country, with hardly anyone left untouched, because as long as they toe the line, they have nothing to worry in suggesting $800B in spending on – just stuff.

If anyone outside of government were to attempt this, it would be called racketeering, but not for them – no. After all they did it with the best of intentions, unfortunately those greedy capitalists just wouldn’t cooperate.

This command and control of our economy just needs another five year plan. Oh and print more money so we can get paid with so much of the worthless stuff that we can stuff our mattress with. Thus we can get a good night sleep knowing that the communist have another plan, all we have to do is be smart enough to reelect them.

but I found even more devastating the quote from Larry Lindsay at the end of the article-
“[E]ven if you buy the White House’s argument that the $800 billion package created 3 million jobs, that works out to $266,000 per job. Taxing or borrowing $266,000 from the private sector to create a single job is simply not a cost effective way of putting America back to work. The long-term debt burden of that $266,000 swamps any benefit that the single job created might provide.”

what a Stimulus is”. Yea right, a big gov big spender bill and as predicted the Republicans and economists were right.

Keynesian nonsense. Its time for a shift to Austrian Economics.