The Stimulus Seems to have failed

He ended up being correct because the situation got worse under his glorious guiding hand. At the time he was making the claim, we weren't there yet.
 
Chris L said:
He ended up being correct because the situation got worse under his glorious guiding hand. At the time he was making the claim, we weren't there yet.
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if you say so. Unfortunately the timeline doesn't quite agree with you. The time it took for the stimulus to actually get underway, and the time he requested the stimulus we saw continual 500,000/month job losses.

ETA:
how about actually looking at the graph
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds...ate&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rate

Obama made the claim (this recession is worse than 81/82) in January. Look at the increasing rate and you can see he was speaking truth.

It is extremely silly to claim that the stimulus is responsible for the recession when it was clearly well in motion before it was even postulated.
 
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According to the graph, the highest unemployment rate was almost year after the stimulus passed.
 
BobTheDonkey said:
In addition to Unemployment benefits running out for many, many people, the housing market has taken a hit as the tax rebate program ended.

In other words: Your anti-stimulus stance has furthered the economic contraction that had appeared to, at least in some part, level off/stabilize prior to the latest hits.


Here's what I don't get - how the tax cuts are supposed to create jobs. And, yes, I know the rhetoric/boilerplate response of: "businesses use the saved money to create jobs" except that if I'm a business owner, and I have no market because relatively little money is flowing, why would I bother hiring more people? I'm more likely to cut people as the economy continues to contract. You'd have to be a very foolish businessman to hire new workers when the market for your products is shrinking.
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You mean propping up a failing housing market with tax credits didn't work? I'm schocked, shocked I tells ya! Perhaps if the government paid all underwater mortgages for a year housing would rebound.
 
This economy isn't Obama's fault (although it is his economy, politically). People are simply saving more. Who can blame them? Their net worth has plummeted. Hopefully we'll reach a point where people feel they've saved enough and start consuming more.
 
Chris L said:
According to the graph, the highest unemployment rate was almost year after the stimulus passed.
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Nice attempt at changing topics. The reason BAC dislikes me is that I tend to hold people accountable to facts and what they say.

Chris L said:
If you say something that you know isn't true at the time you are saying it, that is called lie. If the situation changes, and it becomes true, that's called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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The recession was in motion when he stated it was. It was severe like he said it was and later data confirmed his statement. It can't possibly be considered "Self-fulfilling" if he wasn't the one to have created the situation to make it. The job loss trends showed to be constant (and severe) for the year he entered office to the year afterwards. This constant rate of job loss suggests forces causing the recession to be well in play prior to his entering the state.

Considering that jobs is a lagging indicator of economic health, it would be ultimately foolish to pretend that the instantaneous value is the end all be all marker at any one point in time.
 
Chris L said:
According to the graph, the highest unemployment rate was almost year after the stimulus passed.
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So it stopped going up once the stimulus kicked in. That proves our point and refutes yours...
 
joobz said:
The time it took for the stimulus to actually get underway, and the time he requested the stimulus we saw continual 500,000/month job losses. … snip ...
Obama made the claim (this recession is worse than 81/82) in January. Look at the increasing rate and you can see he was speaking truth.
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Again, wrong. If you look at the rate at which jobs were being lost back in January 2009 versus the equivalent point in time during the 1981/82 recession, you find that the current recession was no worse. Here's a chart showing the rate of job loss in the current recession versus some other recessions at equivalent times after the peak job month:

http://blogs.fxstreet.com/fxbootcam...b-losses-in-recent-recessions-thru-jun091.gif

Notice, that the end point of the current recession line is June 2009. That means January 2009, when Obama claimed this was the worst recession since WW2, corresponds to Month 12. Note that the rate of increase in jobs during the 1981 recession in month 12 wasn't all that different than in the current recession. Moreover, the 1981 recession started off with a job loss rate far worse than the current recession. Yet for some reason, Bush, et al, felt it necessary to intervene in the current recession. And in month 8-9, the 1981 recession already had every bit as steep a job loss rate as the current recession would have several months later in equivalent time (i.e., after the November elections when the public knew Obama was going to be President and Obama was already talking up his plan for a large stimulus). I suggest that Bush's intervention, plus the uncertainty that business was given by the talk by Obama and democrats about a stimulus, is part of the reason the unemployment rate began to steepen in the December to February timeframe. :D
 
joobz said:
The reason BAC dislikes me is that I tend to hold people accountable to facts and what they say.
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I suspect that Chris L will discover the real reason we don't get along soon enough. In fact, I suspect he's learning that as you misrepresent the facts over and over in this thread. :D
 
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joobz said:
ETA:
how about actually looking at the graph
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds...ate&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rate

Obama made the claim (this recession is worse than 81/82) in January. Look at the increasing rate and you can see he was speaking truth.

It is extremely silly to claim that the stimulus is responsible for the recession when it was clearly well in motion before it was even postulated.
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Did you notice that unemployment had was 8.5% when Obama was inaugurated and 8.9 when the stimulus was passed? Yet somehow he is supposed to be at fault for unemployment going above 9%, a point it reached before any stimulus could even be spent.
 
BeAChooser said:
But the unemployment rate also stops going up even when there is no stimulus.
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it didn't in the great depression...

Unemployment causes demand to drop, which means companies need to cut back, which causes more unemployment which causes more cut backs...

If the feedback is strong enough this cycle will continue until something stops it.
 
Malerin said:
You mean propping up a failing housing market with tax credits didn't work? I'm schocked, shocked I tells ya! Perhaps if the government paid all underwater mortgages for a year housing would rebound.
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Actually, it was propping up the housing market. That's the point I made. The expiration of the tax credit caused the housing market to begin falling again... Thus, the tax credit was responsible for propping up what had remained of the housing market.


IOW: The Stimulus package (which included that tax rebate) was, at least in some part, successful. Unemployment had leveled off - perhaps higher than was touted, but the goal of leveling off unemployment was achieved. As was the goal of propping up the housing market. Now that further stimulus has been blocked, unemployment has begun to rise again and the housing market has started falling off again. Funny coincidences, those.
 
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BeAChooser said:
I suspect that Chris L will discover the real reason we don't get along soon enough. In fact, I suspect he's learning that as you misrepresent the facts over and over in this thread. :D
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I stand by my arguments.

I do not run from them. just look at my sig.
 
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Chris L said:
It actually kept going up, long after the stimulus was passed.
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I wonder why you keep avoiding the fact that your characterization of Obama's statement was wrong?

But to address your point, When did money start flowing after the stimulus was passed? As a lagging indicator, how soon did you expect the job numbers to increase?
 
BobTheDonkey said:
Actually, it was propping up the housing market. That's the point I made. The expiration of the tax credit caused the housing market to begin falling again... Thus, the tax credit was responsible for propping up what had remained of the housing market.
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You can prop up any market if you want. The govt. could have kept the horse-and-buggy business alive and well. Housing is going through a bust cycle. The govt. couldn't keep up the credit forever, and when it expired, the predictable happened: housing tanked. It has to tank, becaue prices were so inflated.


IOW: The Stimulus package (which included that tax rebate) was, at least in some part, successful. Unemployment had leveled off - perhaps higher than was touted, but the goal of leveling off unemployment was achieved.
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The goal was not to level off unemployment at 9.5%. If you count people who have simply given up, it's well over 10%. Proponents can claim that unemployment would have been 12% without the stimulus, but that is impossible to prove.

As was the goal of propping up the housing market. Now that further stimulus has been blocked, unemployment has begun to rise again and the housing market has started falling off again. Funny coincidences, those.
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How does lack of stimulus translate to businesses not hiring people? It's not like corporations are broke. What are they sitting on? Almost two trillion in reserves?
 
Malerin said:
How does lack of stimulus translate to businesses not hiring people? It's not like corporations are broke. What are they sitting on? Almost two trillion in reserves?
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Companies don't spend money simply because they have it, at least the successful ones don't. The spend it because there is demand for their products or products they could make.

The whole point of stimulus is to increase demand so companies will start to spend to help meet that demand. This spending drives demand up further creating more spending and demand. This is where you get recovery and government reigns in the stimulus to keep the inflation down and prevent the economy from overheating and creating bubbles.
 
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