From the ArcaMax Publishing, Business News Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/businessnews/s-652039-850959
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- A consensus has formed among U.S. economists that
President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package,
though messy, is working, analysts say.
They contend the package did indeed save the American economy from the
free-fall it was experiencing a year ago and has helped it to grow, or
at least to keep from shedding more jobs than it would have, The New
York Times reported Saturday.
"It was worth doing — it's made a difference," Nigel Gault, chief
economist at IHS Global Insight of Lexington, Mass., told the
newspaper. "I don't think it's right to look at it by saying, 'Well,
the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus
didn't work.' I'm afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would
have done even worse without the stimulus."
"The economy was weaker than we thought at the time, so maybe in
retrospect we could have used a little bit more and little bit more
front loaded," added Joel Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisers.
But Martin Feldstein, a conservative Harvard economist, told the
Times, "There should have been more direct federal spending that would
have added to aggregate demand. Temporary tax cuts and one-time
transfers to seniors were largely saved and didn't stimulate
spending."