Thursday, February 26, 2009

But Will It Work?

We're on our way to enact the largest fiscal stimulus policy since the Great Depression.

Will it work?

I think it will do what it's suppose to do: stave off a recessionary death spiral, but I can't say I'm 100% sure.

My personal opinion is that implementation is just as important, if not more so, as the proper diagnosis thereof. Even if the fiscal stimulus is the right answer, you can still botch it up by spending it poorly. A construction project beset by corruption and incompetence will give you a far lower multiplier effect per dollar than one that is not. So the debate between which policy has a higher multiplier effect to some extent is a bit of a "fuzzy" debate. How do you know how well something will be implemented?

We do live in interesting times.

2 comments:

Chuck said...

I think Obama will either go down as either one of the greatest presidents ever or one of the worst ever. There won't be any middle ground for him.

Anonymous said...

the package, done deal.. lets move past it shall we.

And Obama is history at this moment. Baring no future calamity, he will be given a pass by history. This cluster fuck that is the economy was already in the works before he took office. He's just the cleanup guy. History will be kind to him... but not to others.