Peter Suderman’s article on why we cannot trust CBO estimates concerning the value of the stimulus is a must-read:
Here’s what the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) most recent report on the matter estimates the stimulus’ effects were in the fourth quarter of 2009: Thanks to the stimulus, America is somewhere between 1 and 2.1 million jobs richer than it would have been with no government intervention. Federal dollars have fattened up our GDP as well, adding somewhere between 1.5 and 3.5 percent to the GDP.
Naturally, the Obama administration is keen to take credit. And in touting the CBO’s stimulus figures, the White House repeatedly employed the phrase “created or saved.” After widespread eye-rolling at such an obvious rhetorical gimmick—not to mention significant evidence that many of the jobs it was claiming credit for were not, in fact, created or saved—the administration altered its lingo and started referring to jobs “funded.” But this too is not as accurate as it could be, at least in the context of the CBO’s reports; a better phrase might have been “created or saved or estimated or assumed.”
February 17, 2010 – 11:37 am
Federal deficit spending in a recession is supposed to create jobs, but it never does. At best, it provides some stopgap demand until the private-sector economy rebounds on its own. Don’t let Paul Krugman, channeling Keynes, tell you that the public demand itself is what actually produces the recovery.
February 15, 2010 – 11:24 pm
Evidently, we are supposed to believe that Los Angeles can dig itself out of a fiscal hole without cutting either union jobs, or pay rates for unionized members.
February 14, 2010 – 12:05 pm
“Harry Reid pulled a jobs bill that enjoys bipartisan support and White House backing because he was afraid of having Democrats beat up on politically. In doing so, he managed to anger just about everyone.”
December 3, 2009 – 11:26 am
Evan Newmark has seen the script for how the jobs summit will go.
November 18, 2009 – 9:58 am
The Democrat leadership in Washington is terrified that people will start blaming them for historically high unemployment levels, despite their best efforts to create or save jobs in Texas District 85 and elsewhere.
October 29, 2009 – 11:08 pm
It is nice that the press is paying attention to the degree to which the number of stimulus jobs has been overstated by the Obama Administration. But more media outlets need to flood the zone on this issue.
The Administration believes it has found both a good policy, and a winning political issue; taxing the foreign earnings of American firms, along with rhetoric about how the current tax system allows for American firms to engage in tax dodginess, and the outsourcing of jobs overseas.
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
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Posted in Blogs, Chequer-Board
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Also tagged Barack Obama, Economic Ignorance, economy, Employment, Insourcing, Obama Administration, Outsourcing, Tax Increase, tax policy, taxes, Taxing Foreign Earnings
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It’s a pity that we will be looking to the Administration to give us guidance on job numbers. The reason it is a pity is that the numbers the Administration is giving us cannot be trusted:
First, the good news–Job losses appear to be lessening in pace and the economy looks set to make a turnaround:
