Clearly, if you talk to any nonpartisan economist, the stimulus did prevent the U.S. recession from turning into a full-blown depression. Moody’s, not exactly partisan, estimates it has added 1.6 to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, believes that estimate is conservative.

Yet the Obama White House gets no credit. Republicans are winning the war of the words, claiming it was a colossal waste of time. They are dissing it even as their own congressional districts benefit from the investment. And they are getting away with it.
Why?
Added jobs were jobs saved

Even Boulder Finds It Isn't Easy Going Green

"What we've found is that for the vast majority of people, it's exceedingly difficult to get them to do much of anything," says Kevin Doran, a senior research fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

President Barack Obama has set ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, in part by improving energy efficiency. Last year's stimulus bill set aside billions to weatherize buildings. The president has also called for a "cash for caulkers" rebate for Americans who weatherize their homes.

But Boulder has found that financial incentives and an intense publicity campaign aren't enough to spur most homeowners to action, even in a city so environmentally conscious that the college football stadium won't sell potato chips because the packaging isn't recyclable.

What planet are Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Democrats on?

Obama's own economic advisers say that unemployment is going to average 10 percent this year and 9.2 percent next year.

And yet all that Harry Reid now is proposing to spend on a new jobs
bill is $15 billion over the next decade, which is peanuts. And most of
those peanuts are going directly to businesses, which is the least
efficient way to stimulate the economy.

There is no money to extend unemployment benefits.

There is no money to extend health care coverage to the unemployed.

read more

Republicans including Sarah Palin have taken to attacking Barack Obama as a "professor." This line of attack taps into a long history of anti-intellectualism, stereotypes about higher-education, and possibly racism in American politics....

This just in via Reuters:

The White House announced on Thursday that President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama would meet on February 18, despite China’s warning that such talks could hurt already-strained Sino-U.S. relations. [...]

Obama’s meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader is likely to set off a new round of sniping from Beijing, which has seen tensions with Washington rise over issues ranging from trade to currency to planned U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

More from Reuters’ report here. (Opens in new window.)

President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It's called war.

The President has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush.

Where's the change we can believe in?

Bush left a legacy of two wars, neither of which was ever fully explained or justified. Obama has merely picked up the sword that Bush left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the struggle against terrorism, one might say, "Who cares?"

read more

^{This is an update of a summary and economic prediction I originally published July 20, 2009}
During the Great Depression, following the stock market crash of 1929, the American public sought a scapegoat for their economic plight. Some held President Hoover responsible, others targeted the three B's -- brokers, bankers, and businessmen. In reality, it could not be attributed to one individual or even a group of people. The roots of the Great Depression were in the very structure of the American economy itself.

America's Economic Flaw: Unless the US economy expands and inflates no less than three percent per year on average, it will enter a "gravity well" that is very difficult to reverse. Factors like debt obligations and asset displacement or depletion (think real estate) intensify the risk. It's built into our brand of Capitalism.

The Wealth Gap: Unlike the Economic Flaw, which is built in to foundation of our economy, the Wealth Gap is determined by the political ideology of the Right or the Left, when it gains the power to enact economic laws. The Wealth Gap is a reliable predictor of massive economic cycles that trigger collapse.

Let's see how this works:

Is Barack Obama killing too many bad guys before the U.S. can interrogate them?

Here comes the China liquidity post-sugar high crash. In comments published tomorrow (no, not an Art Cashin brain teaser), a senior government economist said that surging money supply is leading to inflation. Yet, since in China apparently you can be half pregnant (preferably with one and a half boys), the recommendation from the government is to increase reserve requirements instead of interest rates. The implication is that it is only a matter of time before both end up getting hiked.

Market News reports that National Bureau of [True and Unmanipulated] Statistics chief economist Yao Jingyuan said "Money supply is too big and that's leading to excess liquidity." Yet Yao Jing said he would "prefer reserve hikes to rate hikes because rate hikes could cause hot money to flow back."

Consumer price inflation ticked up to 1.9% y/y in December, only the second month since the outbreak of the financial crisis that consumer prices have been in positive territory.