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Another Boost for the Economy?
Economist's View — ... We do not need a second stimulus plan, by Bruce Bartlett, Commentary, Financial Times: As the US unemployment rate has risen to 9.5 per cent from 8.1 per cent since the $787bn fiscal stimulus package was enacted in February, many Democrats have become very nervous. They say that another large stimulus may be needed to keep unemployment from rising well beyond the 10 per cent rate that President Barack Obama has predicted will be reached this year. ...

Bruce Bartlett misstates the problem
Paul Krugman — He says : The problem is that the Obama administration was much too optimistic about how quickly stimulus spending would affect the economy. Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, chief economist to vice president Joe Biden, forecast in January that the stimulus would reduce unemployment almost immediately. Um, that’s totally false. Did Bartlett even look at the Bernstein-Romer paper? Here’s the ...

Pink picks
FT Alphaville — ... Monetary policy’s various guises from near-zero short-term interest rates, to massive liquidity injections, to quantitative easing and its relatives have so far had no traction in this crisis. While the global economy is no longer shrinking at quite the speeds seen at the beginning of the year, it is still trapped in a bad recession. We do not need a second stimulus plan Bruce Bartlett, a Treasury Department economist during the George H.W. Bush administration, write s: Another stimulus would be a grave mistake. The first one was justified by extraordinary circumstances. But it ...

links for 2009-07-06
J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles — ... Pul Krugman: What didn’t the vice president know? And when did he not know it? Bruce Bartlett: We do not need a second stimulus plan Mick LaSalle: 'Moon' aims ...

Assorted links
Marginal Revolution — 1. Australia markets in everything, naval edition. 2. Profile of Mark Thoma. 3. Via Kat, the new Dan Ariely chapters. 4. Short WSJ write-up of (part of) Create Your Own Economy. 5. Does job retraining work? 6. Which movies impress professional stuntmen? 7. The culture that is German

A second stimulus?
Marginal Revolution — That's today's topic in the blogosphere, starting with Bruce Bartlett, and then Paul Krugman (and here) and Megan McArdle.  The economy hasn't exactly gone well but a priori that could support either the view that the stimulus won't much help, or the view that we needed (and still need) a bigger stimulus. I'll restate a few of my core points on this topic: 1. If we're not in a liquidity trap, monetary policy is a better way to stimulate aggregate demand. 2. If we are in a liquidity trap, the stimulative effects of fiscal ...

On the Need for More Stimulus
Capital Gains and Games — Do we need a second stimulus?  Bruce Bartlett says not yet.  Paul Krugman says yes.  Donald Marron reminds us how to count to three.  For my two cents (before multipliers, that is), the word stimulus is completely unhelpful -- it has come to mean spending money we don't have on stuff we don't need, just for the sake of spending it "quickly."  From December of last year: If I had my druthers, the word "stimulus" would be expunged from public discussion, along with "bailout" and "rescue."  These words convey the idea that, because we ...

Words from the (investment) wise July 12, 2009
The Big Picture —