Jesus christ. Here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/20100216-annual-report-progress-recovery-act.pdf

Actually read something that uses actual data and stop quibbling over one news source being biased and another being non-biased. The fact remains all of the money has not been spent, some of the money was spent to keep shit from tanking (ie - state budgets, medicaid benefits, etc), and some of the money was spent on tax breaks for everyone and businesses. Do I think this is the most effective government program ever? No. Do I think we blew 500k per job based off the numbers people keep spouting? No. Like always the answer is somewhere inbetween what the left and right make it out to be. Stop being partisan assholes and look at shit objectively.

I'm objective........I just stated that I didn't give it any credit. You said just as much hoe. That article is biased and the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Stop being an overbearing centrist.

Kehoe:

The White House report you cited itself does not give us much help, but it cites a Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) report

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/100113-economic-impact-arra-second-quarterly-report.pdf

which gives us some background as to where the estimates come from. The net jobs created/saved would be the different between what we see and what would have happened, but of course we can't observe what would have happened. We have to forecast it from pre-2009 data. The only clue the CEA report gives us (p. 11) is "We include four lags of each variable". In ordinary English, that means they predicted next quarter's number from a weighted mix of the values of the last known four quarters. But the CEA doesn't tell us what weighting they used and they don't cite any refereed papers about forecasting models. Their report would be stronger if they tell us what model they used.

My net take is that the ability to forecast 2009 data from 2008 data is not any better now than it was back in 2008 when they forecasted that unemployment would top out at 9.2 percent.

Correct. I was going more for the overall spending side of things. People go back the overall 800 billion dollar figure of the stimulus and make the assumption that that number is all meant for job creation when it isn't the case. We've got a lot of shit broken right now in this country and programs that are having to be subsidized to even stay afloat. It's time both sides of the aisle stop listening to the super loud squackers on each extreme of their parties, swallow a little pride, make compromises to each other and fix all the broken shit we've got right now. That means looking at everything from spending, to taxing, to policy, to age limits, to needs, etc. I don't think all dems are right and have the answers nor do I think they're all bat shit crazy like Nancy Pelosi. Same goes for the repubs, I think both parties needs to get the fuck over this power struggle and actually go get the work done they were elected to do.