Today’s Economy – Boom or Bust?

According to CNSNews.com today, the Obama administration is claiming another victory for the Stimulus Package.

Jared Bernstein, who is the executive director of the White House’s Middle Class Task Force and chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden said yesterday that the stimulus plan is working.  This declaration was based upon a report, http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/DPC_Education_Report.pdf  that came out saying that the stimulus package ’saved or created’ 250,000 education jobs.

It is difficult to say how many jobs were “saved” and how many were “created” by the $67 billion in stimulus education grants, said Jared Bernstein, executive director of the White House’s Middle Class Task Force and chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden. He also did not know how many jobs were teaching jobs or other public school staff positions.

“These are jobs directly created or saved through spending, through the recovery act,” Bernstein told reporters at the daily White House press briefing. “Layoffs were avoided in this case.”

Okay.  250,000 jobs were saved or created.  Versus over 15 million people who are currently unemployed.  Not to mention the 2.6 million people who have lost their jobs just since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) took effect.  Amazing.

We are currently at 9.8% unemployment and on a 21 month straight run of  job losses nationwide.  According to the CNSNews.com article:

Still, a total of 15 million people are unemployed and 2.6 million lost their jobs since the recovery bill was enacted, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Moreover, the unemployment rate could have exceeded double digits had it not been for 571,000 discouraged jobs seekers that dropped out of the work force entirely in September and were therefore not included in the unemployment statistics, according to the Associated Press.

At best, the stimulus has had a net zero effect on the economy, said Brian Reidl, senior federal budget analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“Of course when the government spends money, some of those dollars will go to hire and employ people,” Reidl told CNSNews.com.

“But that came from money that was taxed or borrowed out of the economy, so fewer people are employed in the private sector,” he said. “This is killing as many jobs as it’s creating. It’s why government stimulus programs didn’t work in the Great Depression and why they didn’t work in Japan in the 1990s.”

And:

It is not the first time the White House has praised the economic stimulus act in the face of high unemployment figures. On Sept. 24, Vice President Joe Biden said, “In my wildest dreams, I never thought [the stimulus] would work this well.”

However, in a post by HotAir.com today, Vice President Biden said something a little different less than one month later:

With this administration, we just cannot take anything at face value.  There is NOTHING that this administration won’t spin, hype, fudge or just plain lie about.

It is no wonder that they are now looking to control the internet too.  That is the only place (aside from the bad, BAD Fox News) where we can be sure of what we are hearing.  I would have included conservative talk shows, but I fear that those are going to be gone soon enough if Obama and his cronies have their way.

It is scary, folks -- where we are headed.  I just hope we will have some voice in the weeks to come.  We will need every one of them… hollering at our representatives.  There MUST be a modicum of sanity injected before our America is gone.

Here is the CNSNews.com article

Here is the HotAir.com blog