The Stimulus Seems to have failed

Well the stimulus paid for the repaving of a road in my town that absolutely did desperately need it.
 
And the usual suspects would now be crowing how it´s perfectly obvious that the stimulus worked, rather than gloating about how it failed.
 
I see signs of progress in this discussion. Some of us are moving through the denial phase and moving into anger/acceptance phases with classic "Yeah, but your side is stupider." comments.
I don't see anyone actually trying to say the stimulus achieved its' stated goals.
 
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YoPopa said:
I see signs of progress in this discussion. Some of us are moving through the denial phase and moving into anger/acceptance phases with classic "Yeah, but your side is stupider." comments.
I don't see anyone actually trying to say the stimulus achieved its' stated goals.
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The economy was contracting far more rapidly than originally thought when the stimulus was enacted. The economy is quite complex, so inaccurate projections should be assumed. The basic predictions of the stimulus' impact, however, appear to have been relatively accurate. The stimulus has created or saved a bunch of jobs, and it obviously helped restore investor confidence. The targeted tax breaks had obvious impacts on the housing market-- both upon new starts and existing properties. I'm not a huge fan of spending lots of money, but to claim that the stimulus has failed is to deny reality.
 
Chaos said:
And the usual suspects would now be crowing how it´s perfectly obvious that the stimulus worked, rather than gloating about how it failed.
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You are wrong. We'd have complained if Bush did this, just as we complained when he tried to push through the Bank bailout.

And more than likely, you have defended him. My point is made. :D
 
Oh and by the way ...

OMGturt1es said:
Quote:
(Energy GAO reaction: "… snip … As a result, by the end of 2009, our programs had weatherized about 124,000 homes in total, and we are on track to weatherize more than 250,000 this year. In fact, since September 2009, we have tripled the pace of Recovery Act funded home weatherization. The report also erroneously implies that our goal was to weatherize 593,000 homes in 2009. That is wrong. The goal has been to weatherize that number by March 2012, and we are on track to meet that goal."
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First, the goal of the *stimulus* was to bring immediate relief to the economy in the way of jobs. That's the way it was sold to the public. It wasn't sold as an environmental bill. Hence the legislation allowed states to spend half the money in the first year. Here's what a February DOE inspector general report (http://www.ig.energy.gov/documents/OAS-RA-10-04.pdf ) said about that:

It was anticipated that the expenditure of these funds would result in the almost immediate creation of jobs because they were to rely on the existing Weatherization Program infrastructure, recognizing that many homes of low income citizens were in need of energy usage improvements. As of December 2009, grantees had been authorized to spend up to 50 percent of awarded funds, with additional monies to be provided based on performance.
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But the DOE inspector found that "less than 8 percent" of the $5 BILLION was disbursed (see the figure in Appendix I) by the end of 2009. That's a massive FAIL of government, if you ask me. And the bill was false advertising, to boot.

Second, I think your source is outright lying when it claims that 124,000 homes were weatherized by the end of 2009. The DOE report states that the weatherization production goal was 104,000 in 2009. The report states

Corresponding to the low spending rates, grant recipients fell significantly short of goals to weatherize homes. Notably, as shown in the following chart, only 2 of the 10 highest funded recipients completed more than 2 percent of planned units. If the State of Ohio, one of the most productive jurisdictions, is taken out of the mix for comparative purposes, the completion rate for the remaining nine states was well under two percent.
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And according to that DOE inspector general report, only 30,297 units were actually completed as of February 16, 2010 out of 586,015 planned (see the figure in Appendix II).
 
OMGturt1es said:
The basic predictions of the stimulus' impact, however, appear to have been relatively accurate. The stimulus has created or saved a bunch of jobs
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Where's the evidence? The only evidence I know of for that claim is self-reporting from stimulus recipients, but those numbers are a joke.

and it obviously helped restore investor confidence.
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That's not obvious at all. First off, investor confidence is, well, still not that confident. And secondly, how do you know it wouldn't have recovered on its own? You have already claimed that the estimates of where the economy was at before the stimulus were way off. If estimates of current conditions aren't even reliable, why would you put any faith in projections for what would have happened under alternative scenarios?

The targeted tax breaks had obvious impacts on the housing market
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Yes they did - in the short run. But how exactly does that translate to general economic improvements? We will have to pay for those tax breaks, and business investment is affected by estimates of future costs (including taxes). That will negatively affect the economy. So I don't see why you think this is anything other than just a wealth transfer scheme to take money from the majority of tax payers to line the pockets of the few people who are currently buying or selling homes. Given the government's disastrous role in creating the housing bubble in the first place, why do you trust them to know that housing prices need to be inflated right now?
 
Ziggurat said:
That's not obvious at all. First off, investor confidence is, well, still not that confident. And secondly, how do you know it wouldn't have recovered on its own? You have already claimed that the estimates of where the economy was at before the stimulus were way off. If estimates of current conditions aren't even reliable, why would you put any faith in projections for what would have happened under alternative scenarios?
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In all fairness, much of that is related to financial markets outside of the US - most directly, the near-collapse of Greece and the thereafter increased worry that a major EU nation's economy could collapse - which would negate any benefit the stimulus packages have gained. The question, therefore, becomes: "Would the economy have been worse following that situation than if the stimulus had not been passed?"

There is, unfortunately, no definitive answer to this question. Sure, we could speculate. We could easily speculate that as the US economy was seen to be improving prior to the problems in Greece, that the losses seen in the market were more easily absorbed. Is there any evidence of this? Not directly, of course.
 
OMGturt1es said:
The economy was contracting far more rapidly than originally thought when the stimulus was enacted. The economy is quite complex, so inaccurate projections should be assumed. The basic predictions of the stimulus' impact, however, appear to have been relatively accurate. The stimulus has created or saved a bunch of jobs, and it obviously helped restore investor confidence. The targeted tax breaks had obvious impacts on the housing market-- both upon new starts and existing properties. I'm not a huge fan of spending lots of money, but to claim that the stimulus has failed is to deny reality.
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By the administration's own projections, the stimulus has failed. The only thing that can be said about it is the economy may have gotten worse without it. Impossible to prove and not exactly a ringing endorsement.
 
Malerin said:
TARP failed to pass the House in its first incarnation. Remember the 700+ DOW drop in 2008?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/29/AR2008092900623.html?hpid=topnews
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Classic case of cherry-picking. Your link is dated Sept 30, 2008. However, you conveniently didn't mention this:

The fund was created by a bill that was made law on October 3, 2008 with the passage of H.R. 1424 enacting the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.
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Wow, a whole 4 days later.

My question to BAC remains although you're welcome to correct your mistake:

Tried?
 
SezMe said:
Classic case of cherry-picking. Your link is dated Sept 30, 2008. However, you conveniently didn't mention this:



Wow, a whole 4 days later.

My question to BAC remains although you're welcome to correct your mistake:

Tried?
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I didn't mention for the same reason I didn't mention my favorite color is blue; it had nothing to do with my point.

BAC is correct: The House TRIED and FAILED to pass TARP the first time. I'm not clear what you're claiming. Are you saying the House didn't try to pass TARP, at the president's urging? There was no vote? We all imagined it?
 
SezMe said:
Boy, my reading skills suck. I cannot find "first time" anywhere in that quote. Your eyes are better than mine. :rolleyes:
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Not that it's much consolation, but I couldn't find it in that quote either. Maybe it's time for me to get some reading glasses...
 
BobTheDonkey said:
Not that it's much consolation, but I couldn't find it in that quote either.
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I'm just puzzled why you and SezMe are so focused on the word "tried". People "try" things all the time. Trying doesn't imply failure or success. My point was that when Bush tried to push through a bank bailout (whether he succeeded or not), I and other complained. Thus Chaos' assertion about me (us) was clearly wrong.
 
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