Obama Continues to Violate His Own ‘Stimulus’ Law by Not Releasing Quarterly Reports

BTW, enjoy your week off. We'll keep the light on for you! Originally Posted by bigtex

Thanks, I will.

Thanks, I will. Originally Posted by Chica Chaser

You earned it!!!!!

So here is a stupid question. What bunch of libtard cocksuckers got all that money? I will bet a bunch are from chicago, or the fucking unions. Bunch of god damn cocksuckers.

So here is a stupid question. What bunch of libtard cocksuckers got all that money? I will bet a bunch are from chicago, or the fucking unions. Bunch of god damn cocksuckers. Originally Posted by seedman55

Seedy, you worry too much! Just leave the "stupid questions" to the StupidOldLyingFart's of the world!

Yeah, Seedy, it doesn't matter where the money went, according to BTLD. Obama wanted to spend it, that's all that matters. He doesn't need to follow the law he signed, so if he gave it to his buddies, they must have needed it. Nah, don't worry where your tax money is going, Seedy. Obama's in charge, so it's all good. Don't ask questions, it's not the Chicago way.

Yea well, it's time to fuck uncle sam in the ass. I am tired of these fucks stealing OUR TAX DOLLARS.

Unbelievable.....these leftie morons don't want an honest accounting of the spending.....

"Section 1513 of the “stimulus” legislation, which Obama spearheaded and signed into law, requires the executive branch to submit a new report every three months"

What do you expecty when you elect a organized crime puppet.

Unbelievable.....these leftie morons don't want an honest accounting of the spending.....

"Section 1513 of the “stimulus” legislation, which Obama spearheaded and signed into law, requires the executive branch to submit a new report every three months" Originally Posted by Whirlaway

Had to say it.Bush didn't TARP had no strings.

I would love to see a report on the effectiveness of the stimulus. If it worked, great, Obama can brag about it. If not it would be good to see the details so that future attempts to spend money on the things that did not work can be stopped... Originally Posted by Laz

There have been plenty of reports on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the stimulus.

But I suspect that what you're suggesting you'd like to see is some sort of definitive final report with conclusions accepted by virtually everyone. You'll never find that. The main problem, to which I alluded in my previous post, is that this is not the sort of thing that can be mathematically modeled in any convincing way. Left-wing academic economists generally hold the view that fiscal multipliers are fairly high and support high levels of countercyclical government spending. Private sector economists who do macroeconomic modeling and other analysis for investment firms and private forecasting firms tend to disagree. The latter group has been winning the debate in recent years. For example, the European Central Bank commissioned what is called "robustness analysis" of some of these models, subjecting them to all kinds of variable ranges. The conclusion was that "multipliers" are far less than widely believed, and tend to be in the 0.5 vicinity or less. This comports with resaerch by Robert Barro and others in the U.S.

One thing to note is that very little of the stimulus package was devoted to needed infrastructure development or maintenance. Most of it was tax cuts, transfer payments, and aid to states so that they could put off tough decisions involving public sector unions and pension liabilities for a little bit longer.

I think that some of the best reports on the stimulus were offered by Stanford economist John B. Taylor. Here's one paper in which he and his co-author explain why so much of the spending was ineffective:

http://www.stanford.edu/~johntayl/Co...nd%2010-25.pdf

By the way, he's the guy who created the well-known "Taylor Rule" formula for monetary policy back in the 1990s.

Another point I would make is that one of the main claims made by stimulus supporters was that we needed to heal the economy by creating more aggregate demand. There's certainly something to be said for that if you get U.S. factory floors humming and create sustained, altered patterns of production that can boost exports as well as domestic consumption. But if much of consumers' additional spending power is used to buy crap imported from Asia and sold by Walmart...well, not quite so much.

One ridiculous claim made by a few pundits is that the stimulus "worked" because we didn't collapse into a redux of the Great Depression. But the money had barely begun to be spent when the recession was "officially" over (NBER call) in June of 2009.

Throughout American history, we've had financial panics, booms and busts, asset bubble deflations, depressions, etc. But in each case, the economy recovered, in most cases quickly and robustly. Prior to the 1930s, no one had thought of the possibility that we needed massive government intervention involving huge spending increases or "stimulus packages."

Here's just one example:

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2...-state-senator

The notion that a recession-wracked economy won't recover without big increases in government spending is simply ludicrous.