Let me repeat the point, the President said we needed to ask quickly to pass his “stimulus” to prevent things from getting worse. He used charts to show how the “stimulus” would make things better.

Innocent Bystanders (who gave us the chart) used red dots to show us just how wrong the President was.

So, while the projection of the impact of the “stimulus” is indeed the different between the three lines, the red dots are the reality.

The chart actually containes 3 projections:

1. A projection of the recession (the ‘without’ line)

2. A projection of the recession with stimulus (the ‘with’ line)

3. A projection of the impact of the stimulus (the difference between the lines).

Krugman’s point is that at this point the 3rd projection is probably the most important. Whatever the recession will do the question you want to know is whether or not the stimulus package will cut down on the recession’s pain or not. If, for example, it shaves 2% off the rate then that’s great. I’ll take 2% off of 8%, 9% or 14% anyday.

Here, though, the projection indicates very little decrease at this point. Eyeballing it it appears like the projection is 8.5% without at Q3 2009 and 8.0% with. That’s a difference of only 0.5 points in Q3 but Q3 just began a few days ago!

To see this point, imagine you have cancer and the doctor projects you have 5 years to live. A new drug offers you 3 years. Well if the doctor screwed up and you only have 2 years to live…that sucks…but if the projection of the drug is still good it makes all the sense in the world to take it.

Now my point was that what is your beef really besides the cheap point of ‘unemployment went up on Obama’s watch’ or ‘the projection was wrong’ (duh, all projections are wrong)? Are you saying #1 was perfect so the stimulus made life worse? All the error was in #2 (and #3)? My point is that #1 was probably the most off. The recession is/was a lot worse than people expected….its a borderline depression level event. The ‘without’ projection should have been a lot higher.

Yes, the rate of unemployment increase is decreasing, but we’re just comparing the actual record to the President’s projections. And we’re seeing that the “stimulus” hasn’t created new jobs.

And how can you call Krugman’s observation relevant since he uses the chart the Administration offered before implementing the “stimulus” without contrasting it with the actual record after it has passed.

Seems the the only ones making the cheap shots are you and Mr. Krugman–where posing a theory is enough to make it so.

The purpose of the graph is not to forecast unemployment rates but to estimate the impact of the stimulus plan. The key piece then is the difference between the ‘with’ and ‘without’ curves. For Q2 to beginning of Q3, the projected impact of the stimulus on the unemployment rate is barely noticeable maybe half a %. The project asserts that most of the impact comes out in 2010 where the spread expands to maybe a point and a half.

To say then that the stimulus failed makes no sense unless you have an argument that the stimulus somehow caused unemployment to be higher than it otherwise would be. This, though, has no orthodox economic backing. Gay Patriot’s link and claim that ‘regulatory uncertainty’ is the problem is absurd for multiple reasons.

1. The rate of unemployment growth is decreasing, if uncertainity was the cause and is getting worse, then you’d see the opposite.

2. Regulation has actually been quite mild under Obama. Yes there’s uncertainity if you’re a giant bankrupt car company or a giant bankrupt Wall Street firm but that’s not small business and that is not the leading job creator in the economy.

3. The macro concerns of the cnbc commentator are quite frankly irrelevant to small business. A small business’s primary driver is the local economy. If small businessmen sat around pondering things like ‘whose going to pay for the stimulus’ nothing would ever get done. Go ask your local repair shop, fast food joint, or consulting firm how much time they spent thinking about whose going to pay for the Iraq War, The Gulf War, ‘Star Wars’, the S&L bailout or $600 toilet seats for the defense dept. before they started their companies. Don’t assume talking head financial pundits actually produce any insight on the productive aspects of the economy.

4. The unemployment curve is smooth and appears to be following a parabolic path (steeper than we’d like of course). The curve does not appear to have been dramatically deflected which is what one would expect if the election brought in radically bad policies. What we are seeing is a business cycle downturn. Granted it’s a category 5 one that’s very dangerous, but nothing indicates that it is any other type of animal.

The other cheap shot is to assume the stimulus failed. But to make this argument you guys have to take a rather odd position. You have to argue that the economic team was dead on in projecting future unemployment without the stimulus but horrible in projecting unemployment with the stimulus. But why is it not more likely that the forecast for how bad the recession would be is the element that is off? If the recession forecast understates how bad it is, then the rate without the stimulus might easily be 11 or 12 percent. Given that this type of depression-like recession is relatively rare while stimulus packages are not there is more reason to believe the forecast of the ‘without stimulus’ curve had more error.

“If we could just tell everyone what to do, we would all be fine”

Vote AGAINST any and all who voted for the liberal progressive lies and economy destroying plans in both the Senate and the House. NEVER give apolitician seniority privileges in committees. You see what the Democrats have done.

POLITICAL CLASS MY A _ _.

Let’s vote people in who willTAKE away retirement packages of all who voted for the liberal progressive lies instead of letting them destroy your retirement.

ATTEND TEA PARTIES & HOLD YOUR LOCAL AND STATE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABLE.

FIGHT, VOTE, PROTEST, CANCEL MSM CABLE AND PRINT MEDIA. SAVE AMERICA.

The more people are out of work with no healthcare coverage, the easier it is to say to them, no matter what you can have government coverage.

The real solution would be to disengage healthcare from employers and make it true free market, so it is easier for people at all levels of society to choose what is best for them.

Sorry, that was some common sense creeping in, not something this administration cares about, all they want is more control over our lives.

“It turns out that tax cuts have led, eventually, to tax increases. Basically, something has to give.”

I read this as skip the tax cut part and reshape the economy instead. Big government must have big revenue so stop fooling around with stimulating a free market system when we are replacing it with a controlled economy.

Geithner is doing the same thing he did when he dealt with the Asian crisis. He misidentified what was a debt crisis as a liquidity crisis, thus the solutions he offered only made the situation worse. This is precisely why Asian economies no longer trust the IMF or modern Western capitalism. Because it’s no longer capitalism, it’s debt slavery.

Are people still responding to gillie? Why? He’s an idiot.

The recession began in December 2007 according to the NBER — indeed, the economy kept growing for a year after Republicans left and wasnt until Democrats had been there for a year and their policies and budgets started taking effect that things tanked.

That makes it two and half years since Dems took control and they have done NOTHING but make the economy far worse.