Obama's Own Economic Cheerleaders Rejoice: $391 Billion In Stimulus Produced $340 Billion In Economic Activity

Which is a lower number than $391 billion, see. So... if Obama had actually dropped the money out of airplanes he would have gotten at least $391 billion out of it. He actually managed to lose $51 billion in the process.

Obama's cheerleaders are claiming that they can calculate Obama "saved or created" 8.5 million jobs (yayyy...) and so on and so forth.

But what they are doing is combining three effects: The TARP stabilization (which Bush did, not Obama), a loose monetary policy (which the Fed is doing, not Obama) and only lastly Obama's fiscal stimulus.

But having combined all three elements, they report -- or suggest -- and the media claims that the Stimulus worked these great wonders itself.

Which not even Obama's cheerleaders claim. They claim the exact effects from each cannot be ascertained, and yadda yadda.

But Obama's Economic Javert, Geoff, at Innocent Bystanders, takes their claims and teases out numbers from what they present, numbers that Obama's cheerleaders didn't see fit to tell you about.

And what he finds is that they're crowing about the fact that Obama took $391 billion of taxpayer money and spent it so damn well he got $340 billion in spending power out of it.

Takes a genius to do that, huh? To lose almost 15% of the money you started with right off the jump?

How's that "multiplier" working out for you guys, huh?

Thanks to LauraW.

Pontificating Jackasses: I remember Paul Krugman writing ten times "it is generally accepted that the multiplier for government spending is 1.4, that is, for every dollar you spend you produce $1.40 in economic activity..."

And I kept wondering, "Um, who is that 'generally accepted' by?"

And he would claim this multiplier was greater than the multiplier for tax cuts (although he never told me that figure -- I suspect it was close to 1.4).

Anyway, so, the generally accepted multiplier is 1.4?

Hey, Paul?

How's 0.8 grabbin' ya?

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America is Back!

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posted by Ace at 08:32 PM

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