Wednesday, September 30, 2009

It's Bad...

From The American:
A few things to note about this chart:

* Each year under Obama is worse than any year under Bush.

* While Obama claims to have inherited a deficit, this chart shows how much he is adding to it (the red part).

* This is likely to get much worse as not one of the health-care costs are included in these numbers.


To add insult to injury, John Stossel has an excellent piece at RealClearPolitics about Obama's rosy rhetoric about saving the economy just doesn't ring true:

In January, the administration's economic models warned that unemployment would hit 9 percent next year if its $787 billion "stimulus" wasn't passed. Passing it would keep the jobless rate under 8 percent before it begins to fall.
Well, the packaged passed -- and unemployment in August
rose to 9.7 percent.

Oops.

OK, economic forecasters make mistakes. Fair enough. But neither the administration experts nor President Obama will acknowledge that their models and strategy are flawed. Instead, they spin the numbers and proclaim success, insisting that the plan is working even though unemployment is higher than they said it would be.
........................

As Harvard economist Greg Mankiw writes, "In light of the shifting baseline, it is impossible to hold the administration accountable for whether its policies are achieving their intended effects."
"The administration, however, has not been particularly forthright in admitting to this lack of accountability. Indeed, the act of releasing quarterly reports on how many jobs have been 'created or saved' gives the illusion of accountability without the reality".


In the long run, spin can only go so far. People can look out their doors and see what is happening to our economy. The Labor Department will release the September unemployment report on Friday. It's probably no coincidence that Pres. Obama is out of the country that day, deciding on a whim to go help out Michelle get those 2016 Olympic games for Chicago.