Stimulus Creating Jobs?

**bravesfan007** · 11-19-2009, 01:54 PM

House committee wants answers on errors in stimulus data - CNN.com

So apparently there has been some "accidental" tweaking of the numbers in order to make it appear as the economy is stabilizing or at least getting better. How do you not catch these mistakes before the numbers are released? Or, are the numbers being fudged intentionally in order to lead people a certain way? Thoughts?

tlj009 · 11-20-2009, 07:40 AM

Quote:

Stimulus Creating Jobs?
House committee wants answers on errors in stimulus data - CNN.com

So apparently there has been some "accidental" tweaking of the numbers in order to make it appear as the economy is stabilizing or at least getting better. How do you not catch these mistakes before the numbers are released? Or, are the numbers being fudged intentionally in order to lead people a certain way? Thoughts?

The whole thing is misleading, even when the numbers are real. I will give you an example. USDA has X amount of money allocated every year. Now they get stimulus money that is to be spent first and after that they can spend their usual allocation. The problem is that they didn't relax any of the regulations to allow the money to be spent faster, they actually added requirements. If you only did one at a time, it would take at least 6 months to put an application together. On top of that, they don't have to manpower to do any more projects than they were currently doing. So even if they had enough applications, they couldn't review and fund them. So although they are spending stimulus money and whatever jobs are created by it (very few), they would have been created anyway without using the stimulus money. It is just a bait and switch so that the politicians could take credit for creating jobs.

JerryLove · 11-20-2009, 04:12 PM

In order to hope to know if the stimulus created net jobs, you would need to know how many jobs there would be without the stimulus.

It's possible for emplyment to go up, but the stimulus to have been ineffective. Conversely, it's possible for the stimulus to save jobs and yet the overall unemployment to rise.

And revising numbers is and has been the norm at least my entire life. Sad but true.

nolidad · 11-21-2009, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bravesfan007

House committee wants answers on errors in stimulus data - CNN.com

So apparently there has been some "accidental" tweaking of the numbers in order to make it appear as the economy is stabilizing or at least getting better. How do you not catch these mistakes before the numbers are released? Or, are the numbers being fudged intentionally in order to lead people a certain way? Thoughts?

Well I am glad that we have have had thousands of jobs created in congressional districts that don't exist! Those invisible jobs in those invisible districts lets hope can do visible good!