Saturday, September 12, 2009

Obama Stimulus Report Card

Because I earlier objected to the Obama stimulus pork-o-rama, I thought I should follow up on it. The second quarter economic figures have come in, and we are ready to draw some conclusions. According to Mark Steyn:
In Brazil, India, China, Japan and much of Continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn't afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world's biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can't compete with Obama's $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.
As you recall, BHO went to Europe to sell his economic snake oil to them, on the theory that if staggering amounts of wasteful spending are good when the US does it, it must be even better if the whole world does it. That the Germans didn't buy any has turned out to be good for them. Sadly, things continue to get worse here.

It sounds like he gets an "F."

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