Saturday, January 10, 2009

Unemployment rate projections

The Obama administration's projections of future unemployment, with and without its economic stimulus plan:

Source.

3 comments:

  1. What is the scientific basis for assuming things will "return to normal" like the graph shows?

    Do the Obama people think "It'll all return to normal anyway"... but lets rack up $1,000,000,000,000/year deficits anyway.

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  2. So the point of this Keynsian stimulus is what exactly. We end up in the same place is 3 to 4 years without a larger deficit and I would put miimal faith in gov't projections. I would stick with liquidating malinvestments ASAP. We should also Chairman Bernake that the financial system gets nothing more and that we may have to restructure debt. I cannot believe he is suggesting creating zombie banks.

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  3. Anonymous said...
    "So the point of this Keynsian stimulus is what exactly. We end up in the same place is 3 to 4 years without a larger deficit and I would put miimal faith in gov't projections."

    Even the Great Depression recovered eventually. The goal of the stimulus is to prevent things from being worse in the interim. It's stabilization policy. You try to reduce the peaks and valleys while still having the same average economic growth in the long run.

    Personally, I have generally not been a fan of Keynesianism. Repairing roads and bridges that need repairing anyhow is good Keynesianism. Paying people to dig up holes and fill them in again is bad Keynesianism and a complete waste of money.

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