My favorite line in this piece: “Looking back” the administration admits that its own stimulus expectations were “clearly too optimistic.” “Looking back”?? Please, any person with common sense who had been looking forward at the time could have seen that this plan would be a complete failure.
Basically, these bozos have just shot the biggest financial wad in HISTORY, and now they’re looking back at us and shrugging: “Ooops”.
It’s interesting to see this unfold as many of us had predicted. The Hope Hangover has begun, and we are about to see what happens when a man promises a Rolls Royce and ends up delivering a Schwinn – with a flat tire.
“WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama assured the nation his recovery plan was on track Monday, scrambling to calm Americans unnerved by unemployment rates still persistently rising nearly four months after he signed the biggest economic stimulus in history.
The economy has shed 1.6 million jobs since the stimulus measure was signed in February, far overshadowing White House announcements estimating the effort has saved 150,000 jobs. Public opinion of Obama’s handling of the economy has declined along with the jobs data.
For the first time, the administration admitted the economic forecasts it used to sell the stimulus were overly optimistic.
“At the time, our forecast seemed reasonable,” Vice President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, said Monday, explaining that the White House underestimated the scope of the recession. “Now, looking back, it was clearly too optimistic.”
By now, according to earlier White House economic models, the nation’s unemployment rate should be on the decline. The forecasts used to drum up support for the plan projected today’s unemployment would be about 8 percent. Instead, it sits at 9.4 percent, the highest in more than 25 years.
