The stimulus bill, three years later

[babylonsister]

The stimulus bill, three years later
Posted by Brad Plumer at 04:30 PM ET, 02/17/2012


We’d be remiss in not mentioning that today is the three-year anniversary of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. So what do we know about the stimulus, three years later?

Well, we know that the economy is still lousy, with millions of Americans out of work. But it’s hard to know what the counterfactual is. The University of Chicago’s Booth business school recently surveyed the nation’s top economists, and the vast majority agreed that the economy would be in worse shape today without the stimulus. How much worse? One possible clue comes in this graph from today’s Economic Report of the President, showing that the recent U.S. recession was far less severe than the average downturn associated with past financial crises:


(Council of Economic Advisers)

More precisely, you can read the Council of Economic Advisers’ most recent assessment of the stimulus here (pdf), in which they note that, as of mid-2011, there would’ve been between 2.2 million and 4.2 million fewer Americans employed if the bill had never passed. (They round up a number of studies from places like the CBO, Moody’s, Goldman Sachs and so forth.)

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-stimulus-bill-three-years-later/2012/02/17/gIQAdS2LKR_blog.html

[snot]

1. I'd like to hear more discussion, too, of

where the stimulus was directed, including all kinds, such as Fed loans to banks at below-market rates.

My impression is that much of it went to those at the top, from whence it did not trickle down.