The letter includes the phrase: "the Democratic party has rightfully earned a reputation for responsibly estimating the effects of economic policies."
Gee, guys. Hope you didn't hurt your shoulders patting yourselves on the back so heartily.
So I know what you are thinking, wow, good thing Christina Romer wasn't one of the people who signed the letter.
oooops??
Oh no she didn't!
Oh yes she did!
Here is an example of Prof. C. Romer's responsible estimation of the effects of economic policies.
Meanwhile, Paul Krugman is attacking Bernie and promoting Hillary based on the notion that Hillary's unicorns are less unrealistic than Bernie's unicorns. For Realz!
It's Mungo's world now. We are just living in it and giving thanks.
5 comments:
Hold the phone! Christina Romer did have some help from Jared “The King of Spin“ Bernstein. Yep, Jared “the Double Bass Major from the Manhattan School of Music” Bernstein. Yes sir, Jared, the non-economist Chief Economist. Apparently if one can read sheet music, then one can hum a happy economic tune.
Love the chart on recovery plan. Has anybody extended the thing all the way out to the end? What was the final miss?
Well, since unemployment is now below 5%, there is no "final miss," it just took a bit longer.
April 2014 is when the unemployment rate with the recovery plan was supposed to equal the rate without the plan at 5% according to the chart. That's the right end of the chart and the predicted end of the recovery plan's effects. The idea that you can just keep extending out time until, you hit the 5% number might work in a happy clappy "everybody gets a trophy" league but that's not usually the way we judge presidential performance. Unless you're implying that Obama's record is only fit for the special olympics, he should be judged without a special handicap and the final rate examined to judge the effectiveness of his recovery plan should be April 2014 U-3 unemployment number where he predicted that the plan would cease to have any positive effect over doing nothing.
Thanks. You got me motivated to look it up myself. The red dots that aren't on the chart are, starting from Nov, 2012:
7.7, 7.9, 8.0, 7.7, 7.5, 7.6, 7.5, 7.5, 7.5, 7.3, 7.3, 7.3, 7.2, 6.9, 6.7, 6.6, 6.7, 6.7, 6.2.
The 'final miss' was 1.2% worse unemployment than if we had done nothing with worse real performance all along the curve than the predicted do nothing results. No doubt minorities and women were hit hardest.
But let's extend our examination of Obama's unemployment raising policies. His recovery plan stops hurting unemployed workers in August 2015, well over a year after we were supposed to naturally recover from the crisis. "It just took a bit longer" is not very comforting for the almost million people kept out of work just so we looked like we were doing something. In fact, it reads pretty cold.
To be fair, they said "responsibly," not "accurately." They just didn't say responsible to who.
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