Federal Spending and Oil imports

Congressional spending and oil import. They match, so far, looking at the last quarter 2010 on the far right of the graphs. The private sector, on its own, would not have driven oil imports up so far so fast. Hence, I think, the initial government multiplier was closer to 1.0 than John Turner computes. But the economy has figured this out and the stimulus multiplier will drop rapidly toward 0.0. In other words, for each barrel of oil that Congress imports, the private sector will import one barrel less, because the private sector is looking at these same charts.