bullshit_detector4

Reports to be released Friday on the government Web site Recovery.gov are expected to show that the $150 billion in grants and loans made so far under the economic stimulus package have created or saved about 650,000 jobs, White House officials said Friday morning.

White House officials said the reports — which were filed by state and city governments and other recipients of stimulus grants and loans — will confirm their recent estimates that the $787 billion package passed in February has so far saved or created about a million jobs, putting it on track to match their estimates of 3.5 million jobs created or saved over the three-year span of the stimulus. That calculation is based on the fact that today’s reports do not include much of the package’s spending — tax cuts, safety net spending and fiscal aid to strapped states, which injected tens of billions more into the economy and, in the case of the state aid, forestalled layoffs of state workers. watchdog groups caution that the reports ought to be taken with a strong grain of salt given the difficulty of actually tallying the effect of government spending. The reports include claims of tens of thousands of teaching and other public-sector jobs saved by the spending, but it is hard to know for sure how many jobs actually would have been lost in the absence of the stimulus.

Nonetheless, the White House is poised to make the most of Friday’s numbers, with Vice President Biden appearing at noon in Washington to tout the numbers alongside Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R).

So was it 150 Billion Dollars to save 650K jobs, or was it 787 Billion to save 1 Million jobs? And how many jobs have been lost? Somebody do the math.




  1. Gamer says:

    The only jobs saved involved Golden parachutes.

  2. Improbus says:

    I don’t trust any thing the government says about the economy. There just a bunch of butt covering lairs.

  3. theweerdough says:

    so it took $230,000 per job? how do you get one of these jobs?

  4. Micromike says:

    The Great Recession is over. We are entering the Really Great Depression or maybe the Totally Awesome Depression.

    I do wonder what clever name we will use to describe this period in 10 or 15 years from now.

  5. Gamer says:

    Micromike

    Here is a good one. The Great Obomination.

  6. Mark T. says:

    Micromike, um, how about the “Decade of Deceit”?

  7. JimR says:

    The math 101…

    Billy paid out $787,000,000,000 to his secret friends. Billy’s secret friends told Billy that they created (about) 1 million jobs with the money. Using this information, the people who gave Billy the money to spend asked the following questions.

    1) How much should it really cost to create an average job?
    Billy: Bla bla bla impossible to calculate bla bla bla…

    2) How much did Billy’s friends pocket for themselves?
    Billy: Bla bla bla impossible to calculate bla bla bla bla…

    3) If everyone who lost their job were just given the money directly, how much would each jobless person receive?
    Billy: Bla bla bla, benefits bla bla infrastructure bla bla bla, bla taxes bla bla bla economy bla bla bla….

    (Over $787,000 each)

  8. SparkyOne says:

    Yes, I believe YOUR government!

    649,876 are czars in the executive branch

  9. Hmeyers says:

    The bottom of the economy is about to fall out.

    Brace yourselves.

    And prepare to get fined by the government for not being able to afford health insurance after you lose your job!

  10. Dallas says:

    This is far better news than expected.

    Not quite as dramatic as Bush saving America from a terrorist by invading Iraq for trillion dollars and of course the looming Martian invasion. Neither of those occurred.

  11. ECA says:

    787,000,000,000 for
    000,000,650,000
    000,002,500,000 = 1% of the people.
    that should show alittle perspective.
    AS well as 1% of jobs would be.

    Lets see how many people could I employ at $40,000 per year??
    19,675,000 people hired. which would have been almost 8%..
    So, if the GOV had hired all these people at about $15-20 per hour, we could have??
    rebuilt most of the national parks.
    Created a WHOLE new trail system.
    Clean up EVERY HIGHWAY in the USA.
    Given RAISES to ALL our military men, to give them a LIVING EXPENSE, and had others Jumping to get INTO THE MILITARY just to get paid DECENTLY.. 19 million people on the FRONT LINES would help allot and end this problem FAST as there are only about 24,000 men in Afghanistan and Iraq.. EVEn if you paid them $10 per hour it would be MORE then they are getting now. About $20k per year and affect TWICE as many people.

  12. Hmeyers says:

    #12 for the win

  13. chuck says:

    If 100,000 people lose their jobs, and then the government hires a different group of 100,000 to do important government work (like signing cheques) – have any jobs been saved or created? Are things any better?

  14. Steve S says:

    Chuck said,
    “If 100,000 people lose their jobs, and then the government hires a different group of 100,000 to do important government work (like signing cheques) – have any jobs been saved or created? Are things any better?”
    .
    Well things are certainly better for those 100,000 people. A cushy government job, great medical plan, great retirement, job security and rabid union officials that will fight tooth and nail for you to keep your job.
    Where do I sign up!

  15. Dallas says:

    #15 “…Lets see how many people could I employ at $40,000 per year?? 19,675,000 ..”

    Good point if you ignore those jobs pay taxes, take people off the unemployment line and may result in homes being kept.

    Let’s ignore reality for a moment and focus on your fantasy… exactly what would you have those 19 million people produce for one year? Is there a secret government baby milk factory I don’t know about? Let’s assume yes. But then what will we do with all the surplus milk?

  16. LibertyLover says:

    Let’s see: This stimpack was supposed to create 3.5 million jobs over the next two years (either the article is wrong or somebody is lying on the time frame).

    http://tinyurl.com/cw3vbj

    Since then, the nation has lost 2.7 million. Assuming the number reported in the article is correct, this can be reduced to 2.1 million (I’ll round for brevity).

    This means they have to create 5.6 million jobs in the 15 months.

    Politicians will latch onto anything other than the truth to prove they are never wrong.

  17. Phydeau says:

    One of our main problems is that we’re exporting all the jobs that only require a 100 IQ to India and China where we can pay them less money. So what are we going to do with all the 100 IQ people in America?

    In my field, software engineering, they’re exporting all the entry-level jobs to India and other places. So all the Americans who would have become software engineers do something else, because there are no entry-level jobs. Then after a decade or two, the senior-level software engineers retire, and there are no Americans to take their place. Eventually the entire software engineering industry will migrate out of America, and we’ll be at the mercy of foreigners.

    I’m sure this applies to other fields too. We seem to be turning ourselves into a third-world country.

  18. Alienbike says:

    Ivy league math is different from public school math. First you start with the answer you want and then you say “these are not the droids you are looking for”.

  19. ECA says:

    15, then device my numbers by 5..
    And I still get almost 2% of the people employed..4% if I lift it to $20k per person..
    Lets look at the BOTTOM 40% of the USA, that cant make ends meet.
    BASED on 250million people of working age..
    is about 100million people..and $150,000,000,000
    you could give everyone of that 40% $1500 to PAY RENT.
    Problems we have..
    Corps that dont see that PLACING their company in RURAL areas, is CHEAPER..
    TRAINING from RURAL areas is CHEAPER.
    States that think being in the CITY should cost you MORE to live and charge higher TAXES.
    UTILITIES that are FORCED to make profits, because that have STOCKS.
    corps that think we can be made GULLIBLE, forever.

  20. Dallas says:

    Oops I meant to address #12, not #15 .

    I picked the wrong loonie. My bad.

  21. Jim says:

    *shrug*

    This is nothing new, ALL administrations from the Depression til today liked to speak about how they created jobs from this that or the other.

    Sometimes they were completely right, other times they just took a few jobs numbers and announced they were making an impact, even though the numbers had nothing to do with what they had actually done.

    I’m far more curious why every conservative twit seems to think the stimulus was supposed to work within 3 months. The government never ever works that quickly on ANYTHING. I expect to see some small impact through next year, but it will be more drowned out by any recovery we actually get.

  22. Olo Baggins of Bywater says:

    I’m far more curious why every conservative twit seems to think the stimulus was supposed to work within 3 months.

    Because they aren’t accountable for anything.

  23. SparkyOne says:

    And the market reacts

    -249.85

  24. bill says:

    I was trying to think of something clever to say about all of this but I’m I’m thinking we are really screwed this time.

    Maybe we need another world war to clear the air again.

  25. Improbus says:

    Alfred, I think you meant turbine. A turban is a headdress consisting of a long scarf-like single piece of cloth wound around the head.

  26. Athon says:

    Can I please have one of those jobs. This ‘recovery’ has allowed me to switch to part-time employment…it’s so exciting…maybe next I can be in a food bank.

  27. chuck says:

    But in this article:
    http://reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE59T2QP20091030

    Vice-President clearly says that the stimulus package has created over a million jobs.

    He can’t be wrong can he?

  28. soundwash says:

    # 4 theweerdough said,

    so it took $230,000 per job? how do you get one of these jobs?

    Careful now, I think the government’s fluoridated ability to spin numbers is rubbing off on you..

    I believe, it’s $230,769.23 per job.

    Judging by sea of red across the board on the markets today, I think everyone else did the math too.

    Just one day off from the Black Tuesday anniversary of the ’29 crash.

    I suspect Monday we will see an even larger sell off..

    The biggest joke was the report yesterday of the 3.6% growth in 3Q GDP.. -coupled with a decrease in consumer spending and confidence, in a 70% consumer driven economy.

    …mmmkay

    I suppose no one stopped for a moment and thought.. “hmm..i wonder if that $3billion dollar government “cash for clunkers” injection into the economy might of had an “artificial” effect on that figure.

    Remember the commercial real estate bomb that we have been watching tick down to detonation..?

    Well, on Monday the 26th, “Capmark Files for Bankruptcy With $21 Billion in Debt” (which has seemed to escape the MSM, of course..)

    “Capmark provides mortgage financing and portfolio management services for investors in apartment buildings, offices, industrial property, shopping centers and malls.”

    “The company, formerly known as GMAC Commercial Holding Corp., services more than $360 billion of debt”

    The big names named that will lose money in the article are:

    GMAC
    Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ”
    Citibank NA,
    Deutsche Bank Trust Co. Americas”

    Article link

    Gee…didn’t all these guys just get billions in bailouts and even reported billions in profits recently??

    (tic, toc, tic, toc…)

    Still believe the worst is over?? (or anything you hear in the news?)

    On Oct 25th, 1929, 3 days before the crash of ’29.. “the papers were abuzz with the “worst is over”

    It’ll be interesting to see if we make it to Monday, or through the week without some “incident” over the weekend happening to blame the continuing crash on so the administration could say “drat, our outstanding economic stimulus actions have been dashed by the nefarious actions of [insert favorite gov boogie man of the day here]..had this not happened, economic growth would have been astounding!”

    All sorts of bubbles are about to pop…

    last tidbit.. at the open of the NYSE this morning, there was such a flood of sell orders in the cash equities market that the system “crashed” for a short while..

    How convenient..

    (search on “NYSE open disrupted by flood of orders” for the details..)

    -s

  29. BigBoyBC says:

    “Save AND Create” is what Obama was saying!! Get it right white boys!

  30. Hmeyers says:

    Did my embed work?


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