The stimulus worked out pretty well

[Herbert Hoover]

Repeat after me: "I believe in government stimulus." Isn't it nice not being in a depression?

Has the stimulus worked?

The Congressional Budget Office says the cost of the federal stimulus program will be $814 billion over 10 years.

That’s actually a decrease from the previous estimate of $862 billion but still an increase from the original $787 billion. Another figure that has gone up is unemployment in Florida. The state’s rate rose to 11.5 percent in July from 11.4 in June. That means about 1.1 million Floridians are looking for work.

Palm Beach County’s jobless rate climbed to 12.2 percent in July from 11.8 percent in June. Martin County unemployment increased to 12.3 percent from 11.7 percent the previous month. St. Lucie County’s jobless rate spiked to 15.2 percent, third-highest in the state.

But the CBO, which is non-partisan, says the stimulus has saved or created up to 3.3 million jobs and boosted gross domestic product by as much as 4.5 percent.

[FormLetter]

The CBO, which is non-partisan and also so non-thinking as to be robotic, says the stimulus has saved or created up to 3.3 million jobs and boosted gross domestic product by as much as 4.5 percent.

So 4.5 percent in nominal terms, eh? What in real terms?

[JohnLocke]

My estimates say that the stimulus saved at least 100 million jobs and boosted gdp by 6700000%. Please trust me. I did math.

[erosewater]

The CBO uses a model that predicts stimulus will save or create jobs. Every few months they re-run the same model and to the surprise of exactly no one, the model says that jobs were saved or created.

CBO director Doug Elmendorf says they are merely "repeating the same exercises we already did rather than an independent check on it." He says that they just update the inputs, like how much of the stimulus has been spent so far, and the output is just a function of those inputs.

So if they have a model that says a $1T stimulus will create 1M jobs, once we spend $500B they plug it into the model and say 500K jobs were created.

At the National Association for Business Economics' annual economic policy conference he was asked "If the stimulus bill did not do what it was originally forecast to do, then that would not have been detected by the subsequent analysis, right?" Elmendorf's response? "That's right."

[Herbert Hoover]

[FormLetter]

Well voting against it would be a good move.

[Standtall]

Up to is a funny way of putting it.

1 is up to 3.3M

I would prefer an "at least" for that kind of scratch.

[HatCapitol]

Originally Posted by FormLetter

The CBO, which is non-partisan and also so non-thinking as to be robotic, says the stimulus has saved or created up to 3.3 million jobs and boosted gross domestic product by as much as 4.5 percent.

So 4.5 percent in nominal terms, eh? What in real terms?

Hasn't inflation been pretty flat this year? Or am I making that up?

[Mr. B]

Originally Posted by Herbert Hoover

Repeat after me: "I believe in government stimulus." Isn't it nice not being in a depression?

As I've said before, ridiculous assumptions combined with an absurd model (and make no mistake, absurd is the best that economists can do) will produce nonsense.

[Tecun Uman]

So to recap:
The stimulus is going over budget, just not as bad as previously thought.
Actual unemployment is getting worse, but the CBO's model says everything is great. But we should totally believe what the model tells us.
This reminds me of the old joke about a baseball player whose wife runs into him and his girlfriend. He says to his wife, "Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes?"