The fact that the unemployment situation is substantially worse than expected didn't prevent President Obama from bragging back in late May that, "In these last few months, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has saved or created nearly 150,000 jobs."It is impossible to empirically measure how many jobs have been saved, so the "saved or created" numbers Obama uses are complete fabrications based on the White House's own shifting macroeconomic estimates. No matter how bad things get, Obama can always claim—without evidence—that things would have been worse, therefore he saved jobs. The gullible news media have been falling for it.
That said, the bulk of the stimulus package takes effect in late 2009 and in 2010, so we should not expect it to have had much economic impact yet.
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I appreciate greatly this graph. I'm having a hard time determining the source for these figures. I would like to just double check for my own personal curiosity.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe the stimulus package had any actual positive impact our our nation as a whole. However, a few power brokers have benefited in a unscrupulous way akin to what the evil Wall Street power brokers did.
D Lee said...
ReplyDelete"I appreciate greatly this graph. I'm having a hard time determining the source for these figures. I would like to just double check for my own personal curiosity."
Good for you. Most people don't bother to verify information. Sorry, I should have been more specific about where the information was coming from.
The specific version of the graph I posted came from Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw's blog.
The original graph came from this document by Christina Romer. The unemployment information plotted on the graph can be found on the St. Louis Federal Reserve web site.