Economists’ Tea Leaves Point to Recession David Leonhart, New York Times. Given the accuracy of economic forecasting, this may actually be a bullish signal.
Credit Crunch and Asset Deflation Recession Max Fraad Wolff, Huffington Post
Citigroup Will Support Six SIVs on Its Books Wall Street Journal. This development is no surprise; the bank will provide $3.5 billion in backup facilities.
The Debt-Jobs Tradeoff Greg Mankiw:
The NY Times reports:
administration officials are counting on a lift this summer from the $168 billion economic stimulus package that Congress passed last week and from the Federal Reserve’s recent decisions to reduce short-term interest rates….[CEA Chair Edward Lazear] predicted that the stimulus package would create an additional 500,000 jobs this year.
In other words, each job created adds $336,000 to the national debt.
Results like that make socialist programs like the FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps look much more cost effective.
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Would you care to expand upon your comment regarding the Civilian Conservation Corps? Seems like a cheap shot without much detail to me.
michael,
What about “stupid” don’t you understand? Mankiw, hardly a leftie, points out that each job created will add $336,000 to the national debt. Job tenure has gotten very short in the US, it’s unlikely that anyone will have much longevity. And that’s using the official estimate, who knows what the real number of jobs will be, probably lower.
Pretty much every independent economist who has looked at the stimulus plan says it’s badly designed and won’t do much in the way of boosting the economy.
If you want to create jobs, hiring people directly, as the CCC did, would be a lot cheaper than this all soundbite, no substance plan. Why does this require an explanation? It was self-evident to me.