Shortly after the stimulus bill passed, the economy actually started to turn around

[BurtWorm]

Here's a graphic from the NY Times, accompanying this article, that shows the dramatic change:




What are Democrats afraid of? Here's something they should be shouting about from the rooftops. If they don't, they have only themselves to blame when the economy-wrecking, war-mongering, world-alienating, race-baiting Republicans get back in power.

[ixion]

1. putting something on life support is not really "turning around"

of course there would be a dramatic jump. They pumped trillions of cheap cash into the market. That doesn't make the economy better at all.

[BurtWorm]

2. The point is, it had to be put on life support because of Republican policies

Why do the Republicans even have a chance of getting anywhere near the controls again?




PS: Robert Borosage made this point in a post on HuffPo about Bayh and the deficit:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/bipartisan-blight-iii-eva_b_465397.html

...

The reality -- as Martin Wolf of the conservative Financial Times once more details, the recovery act was too small, not too large - and too laden with ineffective top end tax cuts, rather than public services jobs and infrastructure spending that would put people to work. This, of course, was a reflection of Evan Bayh's bipartisan labors, as he joined with a couple Republicans and the sainted Ben Nelson to cut the size of the recovery bill that passed the House, adding top end tax cuts and cutting spending on school repairs and the like, making it far less effective than it might have been.

Since then Bayh has been echoing the growing establishment clamor about deficits and debt. He has championed the notion of a bipartisan commission to report to a lame duck Congress to vote up or down on a package that would surely include cuts in Social Security and Medicare and tax increases. This is a classic example of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, of conservatives using a crisis to enact measures that would otherwise be politically unacceptable - and that force working families to pay for the failures of the elite. (to follow this issue, go to ourfuture.org)

It's worth repeating, as Martin Wolf summarizes: In sort term, we need more, not less of a boost to the economy; deficits should be higher not lower, as government spending steps in while consumers recover from the loss of over $10 trillion in assets.

Once the economy starts moving, growing employment produces rising tax revenues, and lower spending on supports like unemployment and food subsidies will erase much of that short-term borrowing. In the long term, our unsustainable deficit projections are driven almost entirely by our broken health care system. If the US had the German health care system -- or spent the same percentage of GDP as they do on health -- we'd have better health, and a surplus as far as the eye can see.

...

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

6. You're right. Everything should have been magically fixed immediately.

Because that's what one would expect when dealing with the results of a disaster caused by a long-term systemic problem.

[ixion]

12. Uh, where did I talk about magic?

Handing free cash out to the very same people who caused the issue, though, is not my idea of a fix.

[flyarm]

3. Not where I am at in Fla..pink pigs fly too, don't ya know!! eom

[Fire1]

4. Then you folks need to re-invent yourselves. Don't ya know. n/t

[dionysus]

14. !

:spray:

[ixion]

11. oops

wrong post. ;)

[Statistical]

5. Correlation does not imply causation

How much money from stimulus plan was spent in first 3 months?
Was that token amount meaningful to make the economy turn around?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

In related news I took a dump this morning and the sun came up. Are you going to thank me for making the sun rise?

[BurtWorm]

8. Thank you! Could you take a dump tomorrow morning too?

[Statistical]

9. I will do my best but I would recommend keeping a flashlight handy in case I can't.

[BurtWorm]

10. Excellent!

:patriot:

[annabanana]

7. And the Elephant says:

"That's just a coincidence".

[Fumesucker]

13. Yawn... Let me know when the number of jobs created gets up to the level..

That it will keep up with population growth..

Somewhere it hasn't been for close to ten years now.

Holding my breath I will not be..

[Romulox]

15. It's not really possible to soft-soap the "it saved some jobs" (though many million more were lost)

line. I'm sure they've focus grouped it, and it just doesn't work.