All Posts Tagged With: "stimulus"
Obama: We Must Spend Our Way Out of This Recession
“President Barack Obama outlined new multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to ‘spend our way out of this recession’ until more Americans are back at work. “Without giving a price tag, Obama proposed a package of new spending for highway, bridge and other infrastructure projects, deeper tax breaks for small [...]
9Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 4 comments | ContinuedNew “Jobs” Initiative on the Way
“President Barack Obama is promoting help for highways and small businesses, bridges and energy-efficient homes in a broad pitch to get Americans back to work and roll back the double-digit unemployment that’s approaching a quarter-century high, an administration official said Tuesday.” (Washington Times, Tuesday) Stimulus II: Don’t Call it a Comeback FEE Timely Classic: “Public [...]
8Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 1 comment | ContinuedSnow Job Summit
What are the odds that yesterday’s White House jobs summit will lead to the creation of any real jobs? The summit was based on the magic theory of government: Say the right incantations and reality will be reshaped according to one’s desires. There are no economic laws. There is only will. If we all think [...]
4Dec2009 | Sheldon Richman | 11 comments | Continued‘Too Big to Fail’ Banks Could Be Downsized
“An unusual alliance of conservatives and liberals is pushing to break up or downsize banks deemed “too big to fail,” rather than create a new regulatory regime led by the Federal Reserve to try to keep them from getting into trouble again.” (Washington Times, Monday) But still not allowed to fail. FEE Timely Classic: “Too [...]
9Nov2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedWorld War II Ended the Great Depression?
In his 2008 book, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, Paul Krugman writes: “The Great Depression in the United States was brought to an end by a massive deficit-financed public works program, known as World War II.” He has since repeated this bon mot in a number of columns and television [...]
23Oct2009 | Richard W. Fulmer | 30 comments | ContinuedOld, Bold Futility
In economic analysis and policy formulation, profundity is not to be confused with complexity. And simple logic is not the same as simplicity. Reliance in thought and communication on shortcut slogans and mottos yields not solution but fiasco. With employment slumping, many would have us believe in a simplistic “bold economic recovery program.” With vast [...]
23Oct2009 | William R. Allen | 1 comment | ContinuedThe “I Hate the Poor” Act of 2009
So I was shaving the other day, and the man on the morning talk radio show was on a roll. Cash for Clunkers was being temporarily shut down, or so declared the PR flack in the Department of Waste that administers the program, and Talk Show Guy thought this taught great lessons. “This was a good program! [...]
23Oct2009 | Christopher Westley | 4 comments | ContinuedStimulus Breakdown
I knew the stimulus was a failure but I guess I didn’t realize just how bad.
21Oct2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 1 comment | ContinuedPost-Clunker Slump
MSNBC is reporting retail sales have fallen to a YTD low now that the Cash for Clunkers program has ended. Is anyone surprised? The first time home buyer will probably lead to similar a collapse in home sales. That’s the problem with “stimulus,” by definition it can’t be sustained, and the subsequent crash is probably [...]
14Oct2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 1 comment | ContinuedWhy the Government Fails to Maintain Anything
As the mad scramble to pass President Obama’s stimulus bill reminded us, politicians love to start new government programs. They gain things they can brag about during their reelection campaigns. But there’s little to be gained by maintaining programs somebody else started. No surprise, then, that in budget battles, maintenance tends to be under-funded. Moreover, [...]
23Sep2009 | Jim Powell | 12 comments | ContinuedCommon Sense about the "Stimulus"
Once again FEE lecturer Mario Rizzo of NYU and ThinkMarkets cuts through the balderdash about how well the “stimulus” is working. No one has brought more clarity to such issues than Rizzo. At the outset of the Obama Administration, as Greg Mankiw reminds us, their economists laid out a series of predictions about where the [...]
9Sep2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedSaving Is Killing the Economy?
In the midst of the current recession, many of the oldest fallacies in economics are making a comeback. In a column titled “Why Saving is Killing the Economy,” senior writer Chris Isidore repeats one of the oldest: that the key to economic recovery or growth is consumption and that saving retards that process. Isidore states [...]
19Aug2009 | Steven Horwitz | 6 comments | ContinuedTransforming America: The Bush-Obama Stimulus Programs
George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s “stimulus” programs will permanently transform the American economy. The market-based system that has produced unprecedented prosperity relies on profit and loss, which rewards individuals and firms that add value to the economy and penalizes those that detract value. The various stimulus programs undermine that system. My discussion will focus [...]
19Aug2009 | Randall G. Holcombe | 13 comments | ContinuedRecovery or Not? And How?
NYU economist Mario Rizzo adds some good sense to the discussion of whether, as Paul Krugman contends, President Obama’s policies are making the economy recover. A taste: [W]hat is the mechanism by which about $70 billion in extra spending (the amount of the total package now spent) reduces the rate of increase in unemployment and [...]
11Aug2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedSon of “Stimulus”
Bad economic policy proposals usually have a superficial logic that fools the economically illiterate into thinking the policies really make sense. For example, anti-price-gouging laws seem to keep goods affordable during emergencies. The government says no one may raise prices “excessively” on generators, batteries, and bottled water. Hurray for wise government policy. It takes some [...]
10Jul2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Fatal Conceit
The politicians are confident that they can wisely spend trillions of your dollars. The arrogance of the political class is stunning.
17Jun2009 | John Stossel | 10 comments | ContinuedFDR’s Lucky Timing
It’s not clear how any of FDR’s 1933 policies could have accounted for a 17 percent increase in GDP, even if they promoted expansion, because they wouldn’t have had time to ripple through the economy. It seems more likely that FDR had the good fortune to come into office near the bottom of the Depression, and enough adjustments in wages, prices, and other factors had occurred that the economy was ready to recover.
10Jun2009 | Jim Powell | 5 comments | Continued-
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