| NJ5 said: By the way, since we're talking about the stimulus I found this graph, which consists of the White House's original pitch for the stimulus, plus 5 months of data of what actually happened in terms of unemployment. This should tell you how much the effect of the stimulus plan is understood by those who proposed it... Dark blue line - the White House's estimation of unemployment with the stimulus plan. Light blue line - the White House's estimation of unemployment without the stimulus plan. Red dots - what actually happened
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So...you are faulting them that the economy was much worse than everyone predicted. It seems like you should be making the opposite argument. If anything, that means a stimulus package was more necessary than we thought. Almost all economic data, particularly the rate of economic contraction we are going through, demonstrates that the closest parallel to this current economic crisis is the Great Depression. In two years, unemployment rose 10% after the bubble burst that led to the Great Depression. Without something like TARP and the programs like the stimulus that followed, it would have been highly likely we would have seen something comparable.
And unemployment is currently around 9.5-9.7% if you continue to extend over the "red line" on your graph, which means that you are already seeing unemployment reach a bottom. It will break 10%, but I question if it will make it up to 11%.
Really TARP was one of the smartest decisions Bush ever made. If you want a one way ticket to a depression, allowing the banking sector to collapse is the best thing you could possibly do.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
