Stimulus Spending Has Saved One Million Jobs: Pelosi

Posted by Ray on October 21, 2009 under Main | Be the First to Comment

Who are you kidding? There is no way Pelosi could possibly prove that figure to be accurate and she knows it. Just a few months ago the claim was that the stimulus saved some 150K jobs and a report that was out a few days ago showed some 30K jobs. Not only that, but the claims that only a fraction of the money was spent has been the Democrats excuse for months now given the rising unemployment numbers.

As I stated earlier, if the stimulus was working we would not have seen 53K in government jobs cut last month. What that shows is states are taking stimulus money and using it to shore up their floundering budgets that are failing. In NY alone tax receipts are down some 36% or so which is crippling to the government, they haven’t figured out that higher taxes means people will spend less, go to Indian reservations, out of state or simply move to lower penalty states. Simply put, there is no way to tell if the stimulus is working or not, but if it were working I would think it is a failure given the massive weekly unemployment claims, that’s just my opinion of course.

There are several laughable claims she makes in the video below, such as the unpopularity of TARP will likely not affect the Democrats in 2010, highly unlikely in my opinion. Also, unless we have substantial job growth in the near future then the Democrats are in really big trouble in 2010, not that Republicans are any better, but at least we will have balance in government again. Of course, there was talk about health care and the myth about deficit neutral spending for it, with a public option, which is impossible, and tax stimulus for businesses to spur hiring.

Something tells me that a $3,000 tax credit for hiring new employees will not bring in a lot of new jobs. Especially not meaningful good paying jobs, may be some minimum wage jobs, but not your $200K VP of Marketing jobs. Essentially I believe this video confirms a second stimulus, but not for you or I just for businesses. That may be fine if it jobs, but so far e have spent close to $1T and not too many jobs have been created, so my hopes are not very high. However, they will definitely extend the homebuyer tax credit.

Is extending the homebuyer tax credit a good idea? No, it is not. It is very expensive for the tax payer and many of these loans are FHA loans which require only 3.5% down and they allow you to use the tax credit for the down payment, basically more no money down mortgages. The FHA is rumored to be in need of a $54B bailout in the near future, a claim they have denied, but let’s face it GSE’s of any sort have a terrible history of being honest with anyone. The new tax credit will be available to everyone which will allow an already over indebted America to lever up again, so have at it and let it be known that your government shall not deny you the house of your dreams!

Seriously, this is ridiculous, the market needs to work itself out so let it do its thing. The longer you pump artificial demand into it the longer the pain will be for true price discovery. In other words Nancy, you are creating more pain than is necessary, but keep listening to those Keynesian economists who have been wrong for how many decades now? Never fear, they are from the government and they are here to help…