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Originally Posted by Klath [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As I said before, the specific information I quoted included references. See those two links at the end of the text on the wiki page?

You're acting like Moody's is an innocent and credible source when they share large responsibility for the Financial crash of 2008. This is the same Moody's that attacked lawmakers who tried to reform CountryWide and Novastar and who gave CDOs and MBSs "money safe" ratings.

Because Moody's did this, the GSEs were allowed to expand worldwide and look for investors. They were able to entice investments because of the special rates they were afforded by the US Government, as well as guarantee that the investments would be covered by the Feds in case of a default. Nobody would have invested in these risky loans without Moody's giving them the green light to do so. Moody's also directly profited from this. It became big business. This is all documented here:

http://www.amazon.com/Reckless-Endan.../dp/0805091203

Chris Dodd also inserted an amendment into the Federal Deposit Corporation Improvement Act in 1991. The amendment extended federal bailout authorization to insurance companies and investment banks, including AIG, which just happened to be a constituent of Dodd's. Dodd was repaid with sweetheart loan deals.

If you’re going to include the reference to the ad from Cato then at least include the reference to the response:

“On February 8, 2009, a letter to Congress signed by about 200 economists in favor of the stimulus, written by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said that Obama's plan "proposes important investments that can start to overcome the nation's damaging loss of jobs," and would "put the United States back onto a sustainable long-term-growth path."[60] This letter was signed by Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow, Lawrence R. Klein, Eric Maskin, Daniel McFadden, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow. The general consensus among non-partisan economic sources including IHS Global Insight, Moody's.com, Economy.com and Macroeconomic Advisers is that the economy "could have been worse" without the ARRA.[“

Says it right there in the bottom the ad in big letters. It's your source. Why did you originally ignore it and pretend there wasn't any objection to Obama's Stimulus by mainstream economists.

That's a gross underestimate of the cost of the war (talk about a complete waste of time and money). I’ll even use a source from Cato:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13436

"Just to date the study has found that appropriations have been between $2.3 and 2.7 trillion; with an additional $884 to $1,334 billion already incurred for future costs for veterans and their families. This makes a total, incurred thus far, of from $3.2 Trillion to $4.0 trillion in inflation-controlled 2011 (constant) dollars through FY 2011. The final bill, going out to 2020 will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion."

The stimulus costs an average of more than 300K per "saved or created job". Is that money well spent in your opinion? Obama is running 1 - 1.5 trillion annual deficits for 3 years and counting.

You won't find any disagreement with me about the cost of the Iraq war. If we're going to use your premise and calculate all future potential costs that haven't been paid out yet though, then let's be fair. Obama's stimulus will cost much more in opportunity costs and interest than the original 787 billion dollar price tag. The price tag along over 10 years is more than 3 trillion. There is also a study by independent economists that claim that the Stimulus cost more than a million jobs in the private sector.

http://bx.businessweek.com/obamas-st...745%26f%3D9791

Let's also look at another one of Obama massive entitlement. Obamacare.

Setting aside the fact that Obama stole 500 billion from medicare in an effort to try and make his bloated bill look deficit neutral, the true cost could potentially be 6 trillion. If not more.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/obama...op-6-trillion/

One can legitimately make the argument that the stimulus did not live up to expectations. It didn't. It was an imperfect bill that was diluted in order to get it to pass. And, to be fair, for a variety of the factors you've mentioned. However, we also didn’t get a picture of just how bad the recession was until this year.

There is no argument. It didn't even come close to Obama's projections and it damaged the economy in the long term. It will cost trillions of dollars and have accomplished very little. I've already outlined and provided many examples of the blatant fraud and abuse littered within it. Apparently a Wikipedia article has a section that claims otherwise, quoting keynesian economists and corrupt credit ratings agencies, so it must be true.

If you were expecting the stimulus to reverse deficit spending then obviously you're going to be disappointed. My hopes for the stimulus were that it would prevent a collapse of the economy into a depression or a prolonged recession. Many economists believe it did exactly that.

Which economists? I can cite hundreds who disagree who are far more credible than Krugman. ZERO jobs created in the month of August. Obama not counting people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months and stopped looking for work. These people could be digging in dumpsters and they aren't considered unemployed by the Obama Administration.

You've been brainwashed into believing that Government Spending creates wealth and prosperity. You need to go smack whichever ideologue filled your brain with such nonsense and demand your money back if you paid any tuition.

Tax rates are at near-historic lows and investors are doing pretty well. Companies are sitting on historic stockpiles of cash.

Why would anyone want to hand their money over to the Government so it can be flushed down the toilet? If you're to talk about tax rates then you need to include the 2.5% self-employment tax, Loss of deductions in the AMT brackets, historically high county property taxes, historically high state income taxes, historically high sales taxes, historically high individual health insurance costs for the self-employed, No 401k match or deductions for the self-employed and historically high college tuition.

Secondly the top 5% are responsible for 37% of all consumer spending. If you raise their taxes, especially during a recession, it's going to dramatically reduce consumer spending and lower GDP. Even Obama believes that raising taxes right now would be a bad idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aufAtuTwKlE

Almost 50% of the US population do not pay income taxes. On the contrary, they also benefit from wealth re-distribution in the form of tax subsidies. Obama has increased Government spending by 30% within 3 years, and is running annual trillion dollar + deficits. Even if you confiscated 100% of all the wealth of the rich, it wouldn't even come close to covering these deficits.

Those costs include the equipment and materials to carry out the job. Making a highway, for example, has a high cost in materials. When all is said and done you've not only employed someone, you have a better highway.

Only 6% of the Stimulus funds went towards Infrastructure Projects.

Employment and jobs market are lagging indicators which appear to be improving (slowly). If you look at leading indicators, the outlook is better.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index
http://www.conference-board.org/data...ntry.cfm?cid=1

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

“The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 8.6 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll employment rose by 120,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.” The rate hasn’t been that low since March 2009.

I've already outlined quite clearly how the Obama Administration came up with that phony 8.6% unemployment number many times within this thread, yet you are still disingenuously pandering the Obama Administration's numbers. 350K people LEAVING the work force completely offset those 120K mostly holiday retail jobs. The labor market is shrinking, yet you're claiming the market is improving? It doesn't pass the laugh test.

I see $527 million (with an M, not a B) next to Solyndra. Still, poor use of the money.

17.2 Billion in total Green Job investments allocated within the Stimulus at a cost of 3.5 million per "saved or created job".

Krugman wasn’t particularly happy with the stimulus bill and predicted that it wouldn't live up to expectations due to the way the money was apportioned. The parts of the stimulus that were most successful were the parts that Krugman pushed hardest for, like infrastructure spending. In any case, it's nothing but conjecture on the part of the Austrian Schoolers that their approach would have left us any better off.

Krugman claimed it wasn't big enough after it failed. Krugman also claimed this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_926995.html