Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
Well, first off I think your Rep is misleading you just to make political hay.
Obama didn't promise 8% unemployment. -spence
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Economic Scene-
Forecast With Hope Built In
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Timothy Geithner,, Christina Romer, an economist, and Lawrence Summers, the top economics adviser. President Obama’s advisers have been overly optimistic about the jobless rate.
DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: June 30, 2009
WASHINGTON
In the weeks just before President Obama took office, his economic advisers made a mistake. They got a little carried away with hope.
To make the case for a big stimulus package, they released their economic forecast for the next few years. Without the stimulus, they saw the unemployment rate — then 7.2 percent — rising above 8 percent in 2009 and peaking at 9 percent next year.
With the stimulus, the advisers said, unemployment would probably peak at 8 percent late this year.
We now know that this forecast was terribly optimistic. The jobless rate has already reached 9.4 percent. On Thursday, the Labor Department will announce the latest number, for June, and forecasters are expecting it to rise further. In concrete terms, the difference between the situation that the Obama advisers predicted and the one that has come to pass is about 2.5 million jobs. It’s as if every worker in the city of Los Angeles received an unexpected layoff notice.
There are two possible explanations that the administration was so wrong. And sorting through them matters a great deal, because they point in opposite policy directions.
1) Total Incompetence
2) Utter Incompetence 