We dropped 8.9 percent of GDP in Q4 2008. We lost 800,000 jobs in January 2009. We passed the stimulus. And then the next quarter we saw the biggest jobs improvement in 30 years.
— Michael Grunwald (The Washington Post)
Quote of the Day: Michael Grunwald
[Paul Ryan] voted for the Bush stimulus, along with the Bush tax cuts, the Bush wars, the Bush security spending binge, the Bush prescription drug benefit, the Bush highway bill that included the Bridge to Nowhere, and the Bush bank bailout. Fiscal conservatism!
Quote of the Day: David Atkins
How very like Mitt Romney to think that bailing out Wall Street vultures with TARP was a great idea, but that creating infrastructure jobs through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was not. In Mitt Romney’s world, only the Mitt Romneys of the world actually matter.
Quote of the Day: Nicholas D. Kristof
Contrast the still-shrinking economies of Europe with the stirrings of recovery in the United States, and you feel lucky to be an American and a beneficiary of President Obama’s stimulus.
— Nicholas D. Kristof (New York Times)
A Failure to Communicate, Not a Failure to Stimulate
It’s a little difficult to reply to Prof. Mishra’s latest op-ed because it doesn’t really have a point. It goes all over the place. As far as I can tell, the only actual argument he makes against President Obama’s American Jobs Act is:
…the first stimulus bill in 2008, a $700 billion package geared toward government spending to stimulate the economy, and financed with borrowed money, has obviously failed to create new jobs.
He never offers any evidence to support this claim.
I’ve disproven this hypothesis before, but I’ll do so again — first by repeating what I said last time, then with even more evidence. If you’ve already read the first part, you might want to skip to the new stuff, though it can’t hurt to refresh your memory… Continue reading “A Failure to Communicate, Not a Failure to Stimulate”