Yahoo Front Page : It's Official: The Stimulus Isn't a Waste of Money

[democracy1st]

People of good faith can disagree over whether President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package is creating enough jobs, piling on too much debt, or helping the country in the long run. But it's about time to retire one set of critiques of the stimulus: that it would be riddled with fraud, hamstrung by delays, and crippled by cost overruns. So far, while the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is clearly not a political success, it is just as clearly a managerial success - on schedule, under budget, and according to independent investigators, remarkably free of fraud.

Yesterday, the administration met its self-imposed deadline of spending 70% of the Recovery Act, or $551 billion, by the end of the fiscal year. Almost all of the unspent stimulus money is already committed to specific projects, except for a few longer-range initiatives like high-speed rail and electronic health records. And the completed work has cost less than expected, so the savings have financed over 3,000 additional projects, from airport improvements in Atlanta to new child-care centers at military bases in Louisiana, North Carolina, Mississippi and Oklahoma, from a new five-lane road in Jacksonville to a $14.5 million transformation of a World War 2 ammunition factory into an eco-friendly government building in St. Louis.

(See TIME's special report "After One Year, A Stimulus Report Card.")


After One Year, a Stimulus Report Card


It's the economic stimulus' first birthday, but don't expect any big celebrations. The general public's opinion of the bill that authorized the government to spend $787 billion to create jobs and end the recession is that it has been a dud. According to a recent CNN poll, nearly three-quarters of Americans think that at least half the money spent has been wasted. Economists and policy watchers have a higher but still mixed opinion of the bill.

Most agree that it has created jobs, and the government can specifically point to 600,000 of them. Tax cuts, the extension of unemployment benefits and other measures that didn't directly lead to new hires also boosted the economy. Overall, economic forecasters such as Moody's Economy.com and IHS Global Insight say the bill generated paychecks for anywhere from 1.5 million to 2 million people who would have been out of work this past year without the stimulus.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1964765_1964764,00.html#ixzz116xrsrR7



http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599202278100

[SpiralHawk]

1. "No fraud? A successs? That sucks." - Republicons for No (R)

"Fail, fail, fail, fail. Puh-lease, America, Fail."

- Republicons

[still_one]

2. The stimulus package prevented a complete global financial collapse, however, nothing has been

done so it won't happen again. There are a few patches here and there, but there are still major inadequacies

Dark pools, flash trading, and uncovered puts are still alive and well

and while it did prevent a collapse, it is far from certain the outcome. Within the next 12 months states will start to financially implode unless something is done similar to the bailout is done, and the banks are still not out of the woods. The inventory of houses under water is still quite large.

I suspect though, what upset people the most was the bonus that many of the CEOs who contributed to the problem got.

No question about it though, things would be much worse now if the bailout didn't occur

[TexasObserver]

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