Hopefully we will get actual dollar amounts broken down the same way. These are good for what the White House has as their targets of jobs created, but the dollar amounts would have been good as well.

Agreed, Mitch. If anything like that hits my radar, I'll post.

This is from the FAQ on the website:

Q: How can I see how much recovery money is coming to my community? A: Until the funding is distributed by the Federal government to states and local governments, and eventually to your community, we won't be able to determine exactly where all of the funding will go. Over the next few weeks and months, there's going to be a lot of data coming in, as we coordinate with different agencies. As soon as the first dollars start to go out, you'll be able to track where the money is going. Detailed state maps will be available to assist your tracking.

So we will have to wait a bit before we get that, but it looks like was are going to get some real information and data. This is the sort of thing I have long advocated, give us information and context so we can truly be an informed citizenry. Hopefully Salem will do like wise.

Posted by: Jason | Feb 17, 2009 11:31:51 AM Posted by: Sid | Feb 17, 2009 11:49:03 AM

Sorry but the Dow induced summary judgment of both of your comments is off-the-rails.

So The Great Depression was just a bad business cycle?

LOL...awesome.

As a follow-up to the policy by Dow chicken-little posts... the latest from the NYT:

At 2:30 p.m., the Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 260 points, skidding below 7,600 as losses in General Motors, Bank of America and American Express dragged the blue chips lower.

Yep, the fact that GM is publicly saying it may go into Chapter 11, and ongoing shaky bank stocks have nothing to do with the Dow slide, it has to be the stimulus bill! Man the pitchforks!

Posted by: Scott J | Feb 17, 2009 12:05:42 PM This porkulous plan...

Dittohead alert.

(scroll)

Posted by: Carla Axtman | Feb 17, 2009 12:07:00 PM So The Great Depression was just a bad business cycle?

But Carla, don't you know that FDR caused the Great Depression because.. well... because.. er... he was an evil commie Democrat so he has to be the cause!

...or somethin'

;-)

The market probably knows this stimulus will do nothing to improve the economy and that's why Obama is already prepping voters for a potential 2nd stimulus policy!

This would be the very same market which so recently demonstrated it's sheer miscomprehension of and/or utter indifference to sound economic principles by binging on subprime mortgages and especially on the unregulated, exotic financial instruments backed by the same? The very same market which glibly rode it's own greed to the brink of economic implosion as the Bush administration incompetently ignored the pending crisis?

I submit that the markets are just about the very least reliable indicators of economically sound principles. The markets are about one thing and one thing only - the accumulation of wealth by any means possible, and the economy be damned!

Scott J:

Which "research" would you recommend for a poor, uniformed silly blogger like me to come to the enlightened realization that The Great Depression was nothing more than a "bad business cycle"?

Please provide links.

I sure hope it works, but I'm not too optimistic. I think we'll definitely see some short-term help, but my worry is the ability for this country to deal with the issue of the long-term debt. I especially fear how that will affect my two children when they become working adults.

Yes, remember how terrible things were coming out of World War II, when our national debt exceeded 100% of our national income. Remember how hard our parents and grandparents worked and scraped to pay off that debt?

In fact, at the end of World War II, we were nearly $270 billion in debt. By the end of the 1950's we'd paid that down to almost $290 billion. Then, thanks to the booming '60s, we entered with 1970s with only about $370 billion in debt, which by 1980 exceeded $900 billion for the first time.

Skip ahead to 1993, when Clinton took office, and we were about $4 trillion in debt, but by the time he left we had paid that down to just $5.7 trillion. Now, of course, we're over $10 trillion in debt and that is just outrageous, because that is nearly 70% of our national income.

In other words, our debt has grown from $270 billion to over $10 trillion since World War II, but as a percentage of our national income, it has dropped from 120% to 70%. Over that period, it has gone from around the 40% range during the 1930s and the 1970s (not exactly boom years) to around 60% through most of the 1980s and 1990s.

There are a lot of things to be concerned about but the long-term debt picture of the US government is not one of them.

At least those tax cuts act as a cash flow stimulus to individuals.

You may want to do a bit of research.

LOL indeed. The chief economist for Moody's has done "a bit of research", albeit apparently not in the same dimension of reality which Scott inhabits.

Reality collides with Republican ideology. Ideology loses. Tax cuts are inefficient.

Bush's $145 BILLION tax cut "stimulus" plan produced a miniscule economic boost for 1 quarter, after which the economy continued to implode.

Posted by: mp97303 | Feb 17, 2009 12:55:49 PM That's what happens when you comment before continuing to read.

Heh. No worries. 'Great minds alike' and all.

Boy the stock market sure took a dive today. You'd think with this great stimulus plan and recovery website, the market would be up?

Um, guys, whether or not the stock market thinks highly or poorly of the stimulus plan, it sure as hell wouldn't have waited until today to react to last week's vote.

It's not like there was any doubt as to whether Obama was going to sign the thing.

The author is Ben Bernanke, the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Scott J: Bernanke seems to be following the Friedman/Schwartz analysis of the causes of The Great Depression,specifically in regard to the gold standard and the lack of expansion of the monetary base (although this particular set of remarks hardly provides an indepth analysis of the issue).

Paul Krugman has a short take down of that notion in the context of the current economic problems here and here.

In addition, economists have widely varying opinions on the Great Depression, its causes and the causal relationships.

A longer rebuttal of Friedman's economic theory (and Bernanke's) is here.

To point to one short speech by a guy who articulates only one view as the ultimate resource on this topic is shallow, at best.

I don't see Bernanke inveighing against the stimulus package--in fact most of his public statements have been supportive.

Kari is dead right; IF theories of market anticipation are correct, then the markets would have corrected once the final shape of the bill was clear.

There is a nice article in the Sunday NYT business section about the silliness of attributing market volatility to market "reaction" to specific events ... BUT ...

my reading of the business pages is that today's drop was a response to a) the continued substantial weakness in the Japanese economy (anemic growth, losses at the erstwhile bulletproof Toyota, and a drop in the Nikkei) and b) the speculation (real or not) that the Administration may allow a managed bankruptcy of GM.

I rely mainly on the business page of the Times which i read pretty religiously and the WSJ which I read less often for perceptions of the stimulus, and while both criticize some aspects, I have seen virtually no notable voice on the right or the left claiming that we needed all tax cuts and no government spending.

My question as a parent: are we going to avoid another shortening of the PPS school year?

Damn TypePad seems to be eating comments again.

Posted by: Carla Axtman | Feb 17, 2009 4:13:48 PM

Damn it Carla, ya beat me to it.

I was going to point out that Bernanke was spouting (and Scott J was parroting) the Friedman/Schwartz explanations, which don't hold much water at this point. One needs only point to Greenspan (who was Bernanke's predecessor, and toed the Friedman line heart and soul... or did) being blind-sided by the current collapse and his admitting many of his assumptions were simply wrong.

As Nixon famously proclaimed, "we are all Keynesians now" which, while tricky-Dick was a paranoid power-monger (and war criminal) he was right on that score, despite Friedman et al trying to blame FDR monetary polices ex post facto about causing the Great Depression.

Posted by: paul g. | Feb 17, 2009 4:48:55 PM I have seen virtually no notable voice on the right or the left claiming that we needed all tax cuts and no government spending.

Well, except the lunatic Republican caucus in the Senate which voted unanimously to try and adopt McCain's amendment as a substitute bill which was nothing but tax cuts and which went down in flames as a result.

Krugman is off-base with his recent columns claiming that experience in the current crisis "proves" monetary policy is insufficient. One of the basic tenets of monetarism is that monetary policy takes a long time to affect output and prices.

Milton Friedman's favorite analogy was that using monetary policy to affect the economy is like stearing a large cruise ship. You turn the wheel and nothing happens, so you keep turning it more and more until finally it reacts, then proceeds to overreact, so you turn the wheel in the opposite direction, but nothing happens, so you keep turning, etc.

The best lesson to learn from the 1930s is that, when in a crisis, use both monetary and fiscal policy to try to dig your way out. I think Obama and Bernanke are on the same page there.

Ironically, Krugman had this to say about Bernanke in his new, revised edition of The Return of Depression Economics (and the crisis of 2008):

"If you had to choose one individual to be in charge of the Fed during this crisis, that person would be Bernanke. He's a scholar of the Great Depression. His research on the way the banking crisis intensified the Depression led him to make a major theoretical contribution to monetary economics . . . .And he did extensive research on Japan's troubles in the 1990s. Nobody was more prepared, intellectually, for the mess we're in."

Jack, the thing is that monetary policy has shot its one bullet already. We have basically 0% interest rates for banks, and the credit market is still stuck. At this point, capitalization isn't the problem, it is that we basically have insolvent dead banks that are still walking around (i.e. the "zombie" banks) that will need to be taken over temporarily while being restructured.

That's the path where this is headed, even uber laissez-faire advocates acknowledge this.

Jack, the thing is that monetary policy has shot its one bullet already. We have basically 0% interest rates for banks, and the credit market is still stuck. At this point, capitalization isn't the problem, it is that we basically have insolvent dead banks that are still walking around (i.e. the "zombie" banks) that will need to be taken over temporarily while being restructured.

That's the path where this is headed, even uber laissez-faire advocates acknowledge this.

I don't disagree that restoring the banking system is essential, although I'm not sure a Sweden-style "takeover" by the government is the best way to do that.

But the argument that monetary policy won't work when interest rates are so low (Keynes' "liquidity trap" analysis that Krugman is so fond of) is not exactly a tried and true theory.

I recently heard Bill Conerly, a libertarian free market economist, joke about how everyone always starts out saying monetary policy isn't working because of the time lag that I mentioned above. Then six to nine months later, things start to get better just as traditional monetarist theory predicta, but people credit it to something that is happening at the time (fiscal stimulus, new or repealed regulations, sun spots, etc.).

However, I'm not convinced the liquidity trap isn't real and I favor fiscal stimulus in the spirit of "try everything"--particularly since I think history has demonstrated that the risks associated with excessive spending or debt during a recession are greatly exaggerated.

I do think there is some risk to overreacting with either fiscal or monetary policy (or both) due to the time lags of each. I think that helped lead to the stop-and-go bouts of inflation, recession and stagflation during the 1970s.

Lestat-- I haven't seen any evidence that TypePad is actually losing comments, just lots of double posting as folks ignore the note in the purple box. Comments can take a minute or two to actually move from the database to the published page. (Contact me offline if you have specific details to the contrary.)

I don't disagree that restoring the banking system is essential, although I'm not sure a Sweden-style "takeover" by the government is the best way to do that.

I don't see any reason why we'd have to do it long term like the Swedes. But I don't see any objective evidence pointing to their model being a bad way to go either. They and their social-democratic Northern European neighbors consistently rank near the very top of annual global economic competitiveness surveys. Which demonstrates that they clearly have a viable model.

Interestingly, the Swedes and their neighbors also happen to rank near the top of most heavily taxed countries... while Mexico is prominantly placed near the bottom of that same ranking. Which offers another interesting contrast of models which we Americans may or may not wish to emulate.