The Red Tornado wrote:that isnt to say what would have happened if the stimulus package wasnt passed

I'm not taking a stand either way, but that's not a great defense argument. "I know we were really wrong about these predictions, but trust us, it would have been worse" is more of a cop out than a legitimate defense.

But that guy's conclusion is still wrong. "If we had done nothing at all," we might be adding another table of pennies to dump over. Not saying the plan worked to its projections, just that there's no way of knowing whether we could have been in the same or better shape without it.

Barry Jive wrote:But that guy's conclusion is still wrong. "If we had done nothing at all," we might be adding another table of pennies to dump over. Not saying the plan worked to its projections, just that there's no way of knowing whether we could have been in the same or better shape without it.

The burden is on the administration. They asked for and received the funds partly based on that projection. So I disagree when you say that penny guy's conclusion is wrong, although it may be shortsighted and hasty, which are words that could have been used to describe the administration's projection. The "well it could have been worse" defense is weak, better off admitting that the projections were too rosy and asking for more time which is essentially the tact they are taking by "promising" 600K jobs created over the summer (which again, is probably too bold of a promise, but I guess they feel comfortable making these promises in the current environment).

save or create

and job loss has hastened

pacino wrote:save or create

and job loss has hastened

Save or create

That's great that job loss has hastened, and it could be because of the stimulus, things could have been worse without it (or we might have been better of without it), but that's not what we were sold on. That's fine, but let's admit that the projection was wrong (at least in the sense of expecting far too quick a turnaround) and move on. More bold promises in the short term, although not a tangible issue (I'm guessing it goes to more of the prevailing optimism of the administration, check out the Op-Ed in the NYT that I posted in the economic thread yesterday) might not be the best course of action and suffers from a lack of credibility in the face of the failure of this last round of forecasting.

*Edit, read that wrong and corrected it.

"Just trust us. That trillion dollars we spent was a good investment. Hell, we own 60% of GM now! But we're not going to run the company; that would be socialist. We'll let the workers' union run the company."

kruker wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:But that guy's conclusion is still wrong. "If we had done nothing at all," we might be adding another table of pennies to dump over. Not saying the plan worked to its projections, just that there's no way of knowing whether we could have been in the same or better shape without it.

The burden is on the administration. They asked for and received the funds partly based on that projection. So I disagree when you say that penny guy's conclusion is wrong, although it may be shortsighted and hasty, which are words that could have been used to describe the administration's projection. The "well it could have been worse" defense is weak, better off admitting that the projections were too rosy and asking for more time which is essentially the tact they are taking by "promising" 600K jobs created over the summer (which again, is probably too bold of a promise, but I guess they feel comfortable making these promises in the current environment).

You misunderstand my point. I'm not defending the projection or the request of funds. I'm not using the "it could have been worse" defense. I'm just pointing out that Mr. Pennybags is wrong when his conclusion is more or less "it definitely couldn't have been worse than this." It could.

This is riffing a bit, but sometimes I wonder if people realize how great we still have it. It's a long tumble from the top of the hill. We still haven't gotten off the summit.

Barry Jive wrote:You misunderstand my point. I'm not defending the projection or the request of funds. I'm not using the "it could have been worse" defense. I'm just pointing out that Mr. Pennybags is wrong when his conclusion is more or less "it definitely couldn't have been worse than this." It could.

This is riffing a bit, but sometimes I wonder if people realize how great we still have it. It's a long tumble from the top of the hill. We still haven't gotten off the summit.

You're putting words into his video. Here's his conclusion:

So far we've lost a million more jobs with the stimulus than the President said we would lose if we had done nothing at all.

He's simply saying that the predictions used to justify the stimulus were way off. Yes, he's implying one or more of the following:

1) The economy is now worse off, having passed the stimulus, than it would have been
2) The economy has gotten worse, and it's a good thing the stimulus was passed
3) The projections are junk,
4) The projections are junk, and using them to justify hundreds of billions in new spending is terrible

He may believe 1 is true, but that's not what the video says (I'm not a mind reader). He only says 3, although I suspect he's purposely implying 4. He may also agree with 1, but that's a far more difficult claim for any of us to make about his intentions. We can all agree that he probably doesn't believe 2 (I don't think his videos are merely an attack on the government projection systems, which by the way make for a worthwhile target), but his video does not address it.

Barry Jive wrote:You misunderstand my point. I'm not defending the projection or the request of funds. I'm not using the "it could have been worse" defense. I'm just pointing out that Mr. Pennybags is wrong when his conclusion is more or less "it definitely couldn't have been worse than this." It could.

Werthless covered the response, but I want to say that I wasn't trying to attribute that defensive tact to you.

"All told, we've lost a million more jobs with the stimulus than we would have if we'd done nothing at all."

That's the last line of the video. That's all I'm taking exception to. The implication there is that if we hadn't even put together a stimulus package, we would have done no worse than losing those jobs. And that's not necessarily incorrect, but there's nothing to back it up. We could have lost two million more jobs without the stimulus package.

Barry Jive wrote:"All told, we've lost a million more jobs with the stimulus than we would have if we'd done nothing at all."

That's the last line of the video. That's all I'm taking exception to. The implication there is that if we hadn't even put together a stimulus package, we would have done no worse than losing those jobs. And that's not necessarily incorrect, but there's nothing to back it up. We could have lost two million more jobs without the stimulus package.

Why did you put quotes around that, but then not use the exact words?

Werthless wrote:Here's his conclusion:

So far we've lost a million more jobs with the stimulus than the President said we would lose if we had done nothing at all.

I dunno, maybe I just misheard it. I left out three words. I still think he's making an implication there that we'd be better off without the stimulus package, and I still think that implication is wrong. If I'm wrong and the only reason he's making this video is to say "The president incorrectly predicted the future," I find no fault with it.

Well, another way to look at it is this: There is no amount of job loss and turmoil that would convince some administration supporters from questioning the results of the stimulus package. I mean, there is no controlled test being conducted. We have countries hit by recession, to greater and lesser degrees, and the local political pressures decide the actions to take. Sure, we can conduct some regression analysis, but I suspect the unexplained error term will be very large for a short-term performance horizon. Furthermore, critics of the stimulus package tend to focus on the long-term effects of such a spending spree, so it would be difficult to even settle on a performance metric. Additionally, even if we could decide we'll look at "10year growth, from Oct 2008 to Oct 2018," we likely won't be able to attribute statistically significant differences to the existence of a stimulus. This is because stimulus was conducted by most of the largest countries, there are tons of correlated variables, rendering variable inclusion a very large part of any "finding." (When dealing with correlated variables, decisions to include X over Y for political reasons can affect variable Z. It's very much an inexact science with a small dataset.)

Basically, it's very unlikely that the effectiveness of the stimulus package can be objectively evaluated in the near term. So, one way to evaluate the performance is to compare it to the projections that the government used to justify the stimulus. And the performance here is woeful. The "worst case scenario" in terms of job losses has been occurring. And now with bond prices falling, we're starting to abut against market resistance. The markets are going to stop accepting this government debt (ie. charge higher prices for it), and it will make it much more expensive going forward for the government to prime the pump cheaply.

Sotomayor tripped and broke her ankle at LaGuardia today, yet managed to keep all of her appointments in DC. That's one tough justice.

Laura Bush pleased with Obama's appointment of Sotomayor.

This isn't a huge deal either way. But Laura Bush was on record as believing that there should be more than one female justice on the court.

North Korea sentences two US journalists to 12 years hard labor

The isolated North is probably less interested in having the women sent to its gulag, where poorly fed inmates often do backbreaking work in factories, coal mines and rice paddies.

Instead, Pyongyang will likely try to use them as bargaining chips in an increasingly tense standoff with the U.S. over the North's recent nuclear and missile tests.

...

North Korea wants to be treated like a legitimate nuclear state and hopes to draw Washington into direct negotiations about normalizing relations. Washington has refused to endorse such a status for an unpredictable nation with a history of terrorism, ripping up agreements and sharing its nuclear know-how with nations hostile to America.

...

The journalists were arrested March 17 near the China-North Korea border, and it's unclear whether they tried to sneak into the North or if aggressive border guards crossed into Chinese territory and grabbed them, as has happened before.

2 New York State Senate Democrats switched sides to give the Republicans control again. They claim they did not leave the Democratic party. Both have legal issues. I imagine the Dems will expel them and run other people against them next time around. I can't imagine either of them will hold on to their seats in the Bronx and Queens.

Newsweek editor: Obama standing above the country, above the world, he's sort of god.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr4VZ8xCzOg[/youtube]

According to the latest Rasmussen Report telephone survey, Americans now trust Republicans more on economic issues, for the first time in 2 years. Voters not R or D favor Republicans by a 2-1 margin on economic issues.

Republicans are more trusted on:
Economy
Government ethics and corruption
National security
Iraq
Immigration
Taxes

Democrats are more trusted on:
Health care
Social security
Education

The two parties are tied on abortion (41% each).