Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Jared's case for the stimulus

Jared would claim that this graph proves the stimulus works.  In this graph, the blue line is stimulus spending, inverted. it represents the amount of stimulus money spent from the fixed size pot.

The orange line is GDP. What would a libertarian say about this chart? A libertarian would say that my properly proportioned democracy made some good purchases at low prices just after the crash, but prices had equilibriated after three quarters, so why did my government keep on purchasing.

What was cause and effect here? The cause is low prices, mis-pricing just after the crash. No one, not even a libertarian would dispute a positive correlation when government takes advantage of a buying opportunity. But to a libertarian, the continued buying after prices stabilized is just bad government.

Did Ben have a good monetary policy? Within 15%. likely. It does not take much brain power to adjust interest rates to the real yield curve, even if one is six months late to the party.

Regarding Krugmam's claim that the cost benefit ration favors increasing the budget, then why did GDP stabilize before stimulus spending ceased? Is Paul claiming the second differential, stimulus depends on the rate of increase in spending? I would say it would, just after the crash, when DC was going after low prices before the financials stabilized. But, also look closely at the crash period, the yield curve was guassian.  Crashes are the few times we get to see Guass, and that is also the time Warren Buffet is staring at peoples asses.

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