For Spending Experts, Enough Is Not Enough
Ruh-roh. After sticking around 460,000 for weeks, jobless claims jumped to 472,000 last week. Economists had expected them to fall to the high 450s. That's not a good sign in advance of tomorrow's unemployment report. In fact, it's not a good sign at all. My colleague Neil Irwin, who knows about these things, tweets, "Semi-Benign explanation: Pessimistic workers are quicker to file claims. Non-benign: Double dip time." -- Ezra Klein
Ezra cries that "the government did quite a lot -- though not enough -- to help." But in a world where the government's long train of outsized outlays is pegged to predictions that don't hold, my prediction is that experts on Ezra's side of the fence will be forced to insist that only more than enough is enough. How much more? The power to guess is the power to destroy.
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May '10
Re: For Spending Experts, Enough Is Not Enough
Not only has the stimulus not helped employment, but Obama also will have very little tangible, physical improvements to the country to brag about. Imagine if we had devoted $800 billion to building nuclear power plants, oil refineries, double fencing on the border where appropriate, restocking the military, a Manhattan project on missile defense, a massive upgrade of the electrical grid, etc. Instead, 10% unemployment and nothing.