Stimulus Not Working: Why is Vice President Biden Surprised?

Four out of every seven days, Joe is surprised by the sun coming up.

The stimulus is creating jobs!

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/department_of_labor_spends_40?utm_source=b-section

Stimulus is working...in fact crazy Joe seems over stimulated if you ask me. He might want to rest the brain for a while before doing the next interview

The good news is that this may end up being a victory in the long run for proponents of small government. Well, except there'll be that massive national debt to pay off, which may put a damper on any victory parties. *sigh*

We can only hope that right-leaning politicians use the stimulus to 'stimulate' their 2010 campaigns. If liberals dominate in 2010 then the red party might as well retire.

-W
http://bill84121.blogspot.com

I think this is good news because it means the government will not be so quick to stimulate us in the future. Again people like you, Ron Paul, and Peter Schiff among others were once again clairvoyant.

That's exactly right John. Why do people still believe in Keynesian economics after policies based on it have failed so often?

The 'stimulus' is a joke and to hear Obama, Biden and that dunce Maddow yap all day on TV about it and try to simplify it in a way that it simply shouldn't (can't) be simplified in is disgusting.
Merely spending a lot of money doesn't get an economy going. We now have a trillion dollar bill on our hands proving that to be true. I recall Obama talking about Bush's 'orgy of spending' during his campaign. Well, he out orgied Georgie in about 100 days. Good one, fool.

On another note, it is SHAMEFUL that Stossel isn't invited to the ObamaCare infomercial ABC is running. NO opposing viewpoints are even being allowed on the air. It's a sham to push the Obama agenda. For all the grousing people do about Fox being conservative, there sure seems to be a paucity of outrage over the outright mouthpiece ABC News and MSNBC/NBC are to the liberal agenda. Shameful.

He meant "everybody" in the modern sense -- Obama.

Mr Stossel, what is ABC going to have you doing while they air their infomercial for Obama's healthcare plan? The one where they refuse PAID advertising criticizing it?

Does Obama have something on your CEO? is he threatening him or something? How is anyone supposed to take your network seriously after this?

ABC
All Barack Channel. What a disgrace that their "news" programs even try to pretend to be reporters and journalists.

Click my name - contact ABC and request that Stossel be included in their "historic" debate.

Yeah, Biden's an idiot.

There are people that know everything, nope Biden is not one of those.

There are people that do not know anything, nope Biden is not one of those.

There are people that don't even suspect anything, yep Biden is one of those.

Let's see: Economy was in freefall. Stimulus begins. Freefall slows, flattens. No connection! (yawn) More of the always-perceptive reporting of Stossel. This guy is ready for a sandwich board and and a bell.

Agree, no one better qualified than Stossel to be ABC's reporter on the facts of Obama/Dems/Congress's, HeathCare proposal. The actual facts, reality, as stated in the documents. Not Mr. Obama's political spin, which up to now as most Americans see, Obama's pulpit speeches are inspirational, but lack facts, real plans that work,and practical application for Americans. Obama's plans cost Trillions. Biden by the way is not the correct person to oversee Stimulus spending.And duh, we all knew the 3 mil in private sector jobs was something Obama just said to be inspirational.

"Economy was in freefall. Stimulus begins. Freefall slows"

Only problem is the Congressional Budget Office said that the recession would probably slow down in the summer, IF WE DID NOTHING AT ALL. We've spent billions of dollars to produce the same results as not spending anything at all. That would tell me that in fact, the so called 'Stimulus' has absolutely no correlation with what the economy is doing.

The statement that 300 economists and 3 Nobel prize winners oppose a stimulus aren't credible. Those 300 economists are from cato institute, of course they are going to oppose it, and Nobel Prize winners I can name 5 off the top of my head that actually propose an even bigger stimulus: Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof,Paul Samuelson, and Robert Solow. Here is another group of 387 economists in support of a stimulus: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/economists-letter-to-congress-in-support-of-a-new-economic-stimulus-package/
Even Reagan's CEA Martin Feldstein supports a stimulus package.
The free market doesn't always work when we are in a downward vicious cycle. CPI has shown that prices have actually gone down, prices increased by a mere .1 this month and in some months it was negative. Unemployment keeps going up. The free-market (classical/libertarian economists) believe that as prices drop things get cheaper and people start buying more, and as such business start getting more profitable so they higher more which in turn brings prices back up . While this cycle typically works out, Nobel Prize winning economists George Akerlof explains in his recent book Animal Spirits, that downward prices and rising unemployment create a vicious recessionary cycle. Unemployment rises, out of fear that they could lose their job next, consumers spend less, business cripple, banks seeing that industries are falling aren't willing to lend, more businesses fall as a result more unemployment, and even less consumer spending. Prices fall even more. Investors seeing that prices are falling, decided to wait for prices to fall even more before they start investing, and they keep waiting. As you can see this cycle keeps continuing. What is wrong with the free market analysis is that it forgets to incorporate pyschology into the equation. Why hasn't the stimulus lowered unemployment? Well, actually it kind of has so far, as we didn't lose as much jobs this quarter as the previous. Stimulus takes a while to take effect especially government spending because it takes time to figure where to spend the money especially if its close to a trillion dollars.Thus, most of the stimulus money actually hasn't gone out yet. Tax cuts you say maybe the answer? Sure tax cuts get the money out faster for people to spend. But in a recession of this sort you have a paradox of thrift. People are pessimistic about losing their jobs or maybe already have. So they end up saving their money instead. Sure in non recession times that is good. But in a recession excessive savings lowers consumption and thus aggregate demand and therefore a decline in GDP. And to the guys who says Keynesian policies don't work such as large stimulus. Well, look at history, we got out the great Depression thanks to a large fiscal stimulus called WWII. Before WWII, we didnt get out of the Depression because a stimulus was never tried, FDR actually tried to balance a budget in the middle of a depression. That actually caused a decline in economic growth. Maybe this stimulus might not worked because its simply too small. We lost nearly three trillion dollars in private spending. The private sector isnt willing to spend. Thus, for temporary while the government has to replace that lost of spending. Thus, that is why prominent economists such as Barry Eichengreen, Dean Baker, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Paul Samuelson, J Brad Delong, Paul Samuelson, and Robert Solow advocate for an even bigger stimulus. These economists are much more credible than the ideologue cato institute economists and Art Laffer.

Anyone who believes the stimulus did anything but payback liberal interest groups is a simpleton and would believe anything they're told.

Destroying the earning power of our children through such government spending is NOT a good idea. If you have children, you must hate them.

The stimulus bill was not designed to help the economy, especially not in the short term. The economy was used as leverage to pass a liberal's wet dream of the socialists' agenda. Only 7% of the bill had anything to do with reviving the economy....and most of it isn't implimented for a while yet. The rest was basically pork and distributing money to leftis groups and leftist agendas. It was a ruse they sold to the public....a bill of goods....a lie.

Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are doing the same thing with global warming. It's a ruse to get their socialized utopia to become a reality. Liberal politicians know that raising taxes hurts the economy and actually reduces the amount of money going into the treasury. So why do they do it? Because it's not about the money, it's about control.

Peter:

So you want to call the Cato-associated economists "ideologues" and "partisans" but you don't at all believe that people like Krugman, Stiglitz, and Samuelson are partisan ideologues as well? What about Brad De Long? Have you ever read his blog? It seems like you only think "partisan" when it's a view that is in conflict with yours. Otherwise, it's "professional" or "objective" or "mainstream."