Smoke And Mirrors
Since the last post was about magic – sort of – it seems appropriate that this one is also about smoke and mirrors. Specifically the hand waving of magician-in-chief of Barack Obama and his endless campaign:
Aside from the important and apparently successful stress tests for which the Administration and the Fed rightly deserve credit, the most successful and effective actions taken by the Obama Administration in its first six months were the continuation of the TARP capital purchase program and the extension of the auto loans. Both were initiated by President Bush.
I cannot see what else counts as as “swift and aggressive action” that “we [the Obama Administration] took in those first few months” that “has helped pull our financial system and our economy back from the brink.”
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was not expected to restore the economy to full health on its own but to provide the boost necessary to stop the free fall. So far, it has done that.
2.6 million fewer Americans are employed now than when the President took office, and the unemployment rate is 9.5% and climbing. Job loss in June was greater than in May. The good scenario is one in which we continue to lose jobs for “only” another six months. Please prove that the stimulus is working. To use the Administration’s misleading metric, how many jobs have been “saved or created” so far?
It was, from the start, a two-year program, and it will steadily save and create jobs as it ramps up over this summer and fall.
Uh-oh. Why are the verbs now in the future tense? And what happened to the specific and oft-repeated prediction of 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year? Those are important language changes, along with the implicit admission that the stimulus has not yet “ramped up.”
This did not have to be a two-year program. Congress could have front-loaded the stimulus had they instead given the cash directly to the American people, as they did on a bipartisan basis in early 2008. We would have saved much of it, paying off our mortgages, student loans, and credit cards (which would not be a bad thing). We would have spent the rest much more quickly than the federal and state government bureaucracies now stumbling through their usual corrupt, slow and inefficient processes. Instead the President handed the money and program design over to a Congress of his own party, who saw it as a big honey pot rather than as an exercise in macroeconomic fiscal policy. The President’s primary macroeconomic policy mistake was allowing Congress to pervert a rapid Keynesian stimulus into a slow-spending interest-based binge.
Read the whole thing, please. It is devastating. It pretty well proves that the magician is a charlatan.
Obama’s statements are outright falsehoods. That is not how the “stimulus” was sold to America. It was supposed to “save or create” jobs right away.
Aside from a few rookie cops in Toledo who had jobs saved for exactly one year, what other gazillions of jobs has the administration claimed to have produced – by name. I am not crediting the nebulous numbers the administration purports to have saved. Name the jobs or admit this is complete nonsense.
All Americans are used to “construction season” when road crews are building various improvements to roads, bridges and whatnot. They are used to the endless traffic problems this creates. It is a normal part of life in the US.
It is also normal full-employment season – as in, every, single equipment operator has a job – for the skilled equipment operators who do this sort of work. So the question one should be asking here is if the “stimulus” was meant to suddenly build even more infrastructure projects, where are the equipment operators supposed to come from? These are not jobs that can be done by new hires – it takes training and experience to run heavy equipment.
There is a project being constructed on an interstate that I use daily. Replacing some bridges over creeks. They have been working steadily on it for a few months now. I have no idea if this was a “shovel-ready” project or a long-planned bit of work. What I do know is that another project a few miles to the north – one that has been going on for several years now – suddenly has NO work going on whatsoever. No equipment, no workers, no progress. I mean nothing at all.
That project was so important that they worked it through the winter – and suddenly stopped cold, moved their equipment and started something else.
Is this happening where you live? Are you seeing smoke and mirrors?
By piscivorous, July 12, 2009 @ 10:30 pm
There are a couple of projects around here that seem to have shut down with work in progress. What I have noticed is that the existing projects, that seem to be on hold, were of the bandage type projects. The roads actually need considerably more work, to do the job for the long haul. In this instance the seem to be in the process of rescoping the amount of work to be done.
By plumpplumber(Balding), July 13, 2009 @ 11:02 am
Well, when you start seeing smoke and mirrors, then illusions must not be treated as facts. Hopey statements don’t replace cold, hard cash. The only thing that would have made sense in this bad situation would have been to get the money out just as fast as possible, to help our sputtering economy. Now that’s what you would do if you were planning to save the economy. But wait!!! BOHICA!!! I’m beginning to suspect that a lot of that money is headed to cronies, and what’s worse, we’re gonna be plundered to the tune that we don’t really understand yet, but that money will NEVER be recovered!
What Obama has done is classic – keep enough people panicked, and swoop in for the kill. However, Some of the folks are waking up, and are crying “thief”. So, can the populance raise enough of a hue and cry to stop this marxist agenda? Keep your eye on the money and who is doling it out. TRANSPARENCY? Please…..