Is the stimulus working?

Kevin Drum would like to know. He quotes Josh Bivens the second quarter GDP growth:

"Federal government spending grew at an 11% rate in the quarter, adding roughly 0.8% to overall GDP."

Let make a multiplier formula. Total growth divided by government growth. The federal government consuming about 20 shares of the economy grew by 11%, annually; or grew by 2.2 shares of GDP. The overall GDP grew by .8 shares. Do I have to do the math for Kevin? If the overall economy grew .8 in the face of federal share growing by 2.2%, then we have a crowding out problem, the stimulus is actually shrinking the private sector. John Taylor is right, multipliers are very low.

One can see why Krugman never makes the multiplier argument that Brad DeLong makes, the multipliers are less than one, the economy is shrinking for every increment of federal government growth.

The problem is not the stimulus. The problem is that Obama is spending money specifically on programs not related to the cause of the recession, hence the low multipliers. Krugman is wrong, having a big G does not actually help at all, it makes thing worse as far as stimulus spending.