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TheRealMafoo on 11 July 2009
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akuma587 said:
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

 

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. 

 

 

This is just crazy talk!

 

You have absolutely now evidence that TARP worked. None. In fact, you have a wealth of evidence that it didn't.

 

Being that you will die with the concept that your view of economics is right, with nothing in the world capable of shaking your beliefs, your only option is to make up how the world must have be, to try and fit your view of the course of events into it.

 

This idea by believers of your dogma that the wold "must have been worse" because your ideas didn't work is absolute bullshit.

 

Every indicator in the world suggests TARP did NOTHING. In fact, it was worse then nothing, because we now have to pay it back.

 

I mean if you look at the great depression, the slop of the unemployment line was constant. The line today is constant. To think that it would have exponentially shot up without TARP... unbelievable.