Economists agree: Stimulus created nearly 3 million jobs

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The White House says the multiyear $814 billion stimulus program passed by Congress in 2009 boosted employment by 2.5 million to 3.6 million jobs and raised the nation's annual economic output by almost $400 billion. A recent study by two prominent economists generally agrees, crediting the pump-priming with averting "what could have been called Great Depression 2.0."

If President Obama expected anyone to say, "Thank you," however, he's been disappointed. In a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, 59% of respondents disapproved of the president's handling of the economy. In the partisan war over the economy's performance, the word "stimulus" has became synonymous with "boondoggle," making the notion of a repeat any time soon highly unlikely — especially if Republicans seize control of one or both houses of Congress in November.

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This is the kind of thing that dismays me. The stimulus was not enough -- and it was known at the time that it would not be enough -- but blustering Republicans opposed it and pansy Democrats caved and weasled to a lower amount.

OK, that lower amount probably saved us from a second great depression -- happy about that. But fer fuck's sake, the Dems had majorities everywhere and they couldn't muster up the courage to do what needed to be done? Too bad.

And it is a shame that Obama is getting the blame for all of the economic woes. Sure, some of the blame belongs on him for not doing enough... but when it comes from those blowhard know-nothing fucksticks on Fox, that is ridiculous.

Now the right is crowing about extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy because that will stimulate the economy. Bullshit! I'm tired of hearing the rightwing lie that tax cuts create jobs. They don't! They create more wealth in the pockets of the wealthiest.

Visual Evidence

One year ago tomorrow, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

An Interesting Perspective on the USA and China

The following comes from an article written by Scott Burns, a syndicated columnist and Chief Investment Strategist at AssetBuilder. (The entire article can be read by following this link, or you can peruse the main thrust of it here...)

George Friedman holds up a recent Fortune magazine, his face a portrait in incredulity. The cover declares that China is buying everything, much as the Japanese were doing nearly two decades ago. The inside story is titled “It’s China’s World. (We just live in it.)”

“If China is so healthy, why is everyone there not investing in China?” he asks.

“The obvious question is: Why are they doing this? Fortune doesn’t remember that we saw this before. It’s called capital flight.”

Mr. Friedman, the founder and prime mover at Stratfor, goes on to point out some basic facts about the size of the U.S. economy relative to China. While we bemoan the loss of industrial capacity in the United States, for instance, we still manufacture more than China and Japan combined. And the United States still produces 25 percent of the world’s output. And our output is larger than the combined gross domestic products of the next three largest economies, Japan, China and Germany.

We simply don’t know our own strength.

“If we grow at 2.5 percent a year, China would have to grow at 8.2 percent just to keep the absolute gap steady. It will take generations for the Chinese to catch up,” he says.

Nor do we understand the deep poverty of China. He points out that China has a population of 1.3 billion people. But of that number, 600 million have an income under $1,000 a year. Another 440 million have incomes of $1,000 to $2,000 a year. Only 60 million people have incomes of $20,000 a year or more.

“In the U.S. we have ignored the numbers. So we say all industry has left the United States. That’s rubbish,” he declares.

Obama Sees Signs of Economic Progress

President Barack Obama said on Friday the recession-hit U.S. economy was showing "glimmers of hope" despite remaining under strain and promised further steps in coming weeks to tackle the financial crisis.

"We've still got a lot of work to do," Obama told reporters after a meeting with economic and regulatory teams plus Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke. But he added, "We're starting to see progress."

Obama spoke a day after encouraging trade and jobless figures pushed stocks higher, and White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers predicted the economy would emerge from a sense of "freefall" by the middle of the year.

Less than three months into his presidency, Obama stopped short of declaring that the recession he inherited from predecessor George W. Bush was bottoming out.

But he offered a somewhat more upbeat tone than he has recently on the state of the economy, which is locked in its worst crisis in decades. "What we're starting to see is glimmers of hope across the economy," he said.

"Over the next several weeks, you'll be seeing additional actions by the administration," he added but gave no details.

I sure hope he is right and that these are signs of the economy beginning to recover from the Bush recession/depression.