What the Stimulus has wrought

This is an election year and you are going to hear a lot about how the Stimulus (ARRA) has failed from Republicans.  The folks over at Mosler Economics have put together a report with some lovely charts showing pre and post Stimulus statistics for the country.  

Things are not great and I will be first to say, that the administration should have been more aggressive on that front.  A recalcitrant congress definitely was hurdle.  But I will not let them off easy, it wasn't, as if they were not warned.   That being said, this should put the lie to the "stimulus failed!" rhetoric.  I know it won't.  But it is nice to see graphical proof.  A couple of examples:

 

Again, the recovery has not been robust or fast enough, but some of that was baked into the cake early on.  But this is hardly failure.   It is slow, fragile and relatively steady.  That is better then we were in '08.   You can see the turn around almost immediately. 

One should seriously think about what the economy would have looked like with out it.  14-17% unemployment?  How many more billions of dollars of productivity would have been permanently lost?  That is the question we need to be asking ourselves.  If they administration had not done what it did, and listened to conservatives.  I can not help but think we would be much worse off today then we are. 

-Cheers