Not All Economists Agree With President Obama

If you watched President Obama’s first ever news conference last night you might have come away with the idea that everyone, everywhere is all for doing something, anything almost, in the form of a stimulus package just so long as we actually do something.  Obama left us all with the impression that the biggest danger we face is not doing anything at all.  He had harsh words for those who have spoken out against this so called stimulus package that the President and parts of Congress are pasting together.  But is this stimulus package really the best thing for America?

Well, the people that Obama should be asking are the experts, right?  Who are the experts?  The economists – the people who spend their lives studying the economy and how it works.  The economists are the ones who should have an idea of what will and will not work, right?  Well, apparently, Obama doesn’t seem to think so.

If you go to this page you can see a listing of more than 200 economists who have signed a letter to President Obama telling him that they do not believe the stimulus plan he has laid out will work (see more info here).  The CATO Institute who is running this letter as an add actually says they have over 300 signatures now.

So, over 300 experts are now putting their professional credibility on the line and saying that they think this stimulus package is wrong and is the wrong way to save our economy…  Yet our President and the Democratic members of our Congress are intent on pushing this through.  Why?

Have you seen the graphical representation the Washington Post did on the $819 Billion version of the package?  It’s incredible…and by that I mean incredibly complicated and impossible to comprehend.  There might be transparency, but it does us little good if we can’t understand what we’re seeing.

I don’t have a problem spending some money to help create jobs if it actually helps create jobs and stimulates the economy.  But there’s plenty in that package that isn’t going to do either of those things and the economists say it won’t help.

The President and many of his supporters like to point out FDR and his New Deal as having ended the Depression, but FDR’s Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, wrote in his diary in the late 1930s:

“We have tried spending money.  We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work…. We have never made good on our promises…. I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started…and an enormous debt to boot!”

This economic recovery/stimulus package should not be passed.