Economists: The Stimulus Didn't Help

[nonlnear]

Again, I don't know what those others have said. However I get other info available to financial professional - surveys of CFO's etc - and some, not a whole lot, complain of the very tight credit situation preventing them from expanding. Many financial people expected the $800 billion to draw away money that would otherwise be avavilable for the private sector, this may lead some to conclude the stim had a negative effect on their hiring.

This is a guess.

Fern

If it were a reallocation from an existing budget then that's as good a guess as any. However it's borrowed from the grandchildren, so my best guess would be that's not an effect they were asking about. There definitely will be some negative effects on employment at some point in time (the hope was of course that we could pay those costs when things are better), but I don't think that time has come quite yet. Which brings me back to the dead horse: to understand what the numbers mean, we'd have to see the poll questions and the actual report, or at least have an article which conveyed some of the relevant information!

 

[Fern]

I dont know if the stimulus worked or not but if we are headed out of the recession then the repubs had better figure out how to slander and make it seem like the stimulus never did a thing. If we are well on the road to recovery in 2010 then look out.

Maybe, maybe not.

We'll come out of the recession, that much is not really in doubt. But it certainly won't be the "V" shape recovery we're used to. I recently read an article which was basically a collection of about a dozen interviews with economists at prominent universities, almost all expect a protracted recovery. None thought the stim package helped much, if at all.

Regardless, we're still left the additional debt of about $1 trillion or so from the various 'stim packages'. No matter how good the 'party' you still have to face the 'bill' afterwards. And it still remains to be seen what effect that debt will have on our economy in the future.

Fern

 

[BoberFett]

We're just not a "belt-tightening" people! Have you looked around you recently? See many people who have been tightening their belts?

Of course not, we didn't have to. We put another trillion on the federal credit card. Eventually the Chinese money press is going to stop. Then we're fucked.