Stimulus Immune to Accountability, Still Needs to Focus on Winners

The stimulus bill is going to be passed fairly soon, so soon we will will get to start looking at what we can do for a third stimulus package. The interesting question of last night's Presidential news conference was "How will you know if it is successful?" The President gave an answer about saving or creating 4 million new jobs. Of course, this begs the question "How will you know if it is not successful?" But since it can be hard to measure the saving of jobs -- it is difficult enough to determine the number of jobs created. So really, there is no metric of success, and therefore no metric of failure.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will tell us today that the recovery will take time. And certainly it will. When markets return to normal -- when good actors win in the market, and the bad actors lose, the recovery will start.

Until that time, the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, the creators of future legacies will remain sidelined, the people who will start businesses and employ people going forward. If the winners are chosen, being the new entrant is a fool's errand.

 

[Steadygain]

Interesting - and fairly well put. "Immune to Accountability" was largely the jest of what our new President addressed in his speech. He shared:

1) This Recession is what he inherited and the overwhelming basis was a LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY

The central content of his message is that he is bound and determined that this practice will no longer continue under his leadership

2) He stressed what was spent was largely "UNACCOUNTABLE' - and that He was bound and determined to make sure that the remaining amount he was spending was 'ACCOUNTABLE' and that things WERE TO BE more transparent to our Nation as a whole - so everyone could see not only what we are spending BUT HOW we are spending it.

3) When asked about the holding individuals at the highest level accountable - "under the Bush Administration" - He said "NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW - and people at the top will be tried like ordinary citizens - IF THEY WILLFULLY BROKE THE LAW"

That is ACCOUNTABILITY my friend - so if you want to say our President is pushing for - or is promoting a system of UNACCOUNTABILITY - you'd better make sure that no one else knows the truth.

There is certainly a metric of success - however he was very clear that we are presently in not only a metric of failure - but one on a magnitude that only the Great Depression can compare. Success will come ONLY after very aggressive moves are made.

 

[Scribbler]

Accountability is a desirable thing. And while some may use 'accountability' to assign blame for certain events, the term accountability as used in the blog is the answer to the questions: "How well is what we are doing working? How will we know that it is working?" Find the desirable outcome, develop a methodology to solving the problem to achieve the outcome, and then determine what successfully moving to the outcome looks like in definable metrics. The metric the President chose was "creating or saving 4 million jobs." Well -- I don't know how to measure a saved job, and the indistinct definition of it lends itself to not being a truly viable metric to actually measure the success of the chosen policy.

With respect to the comparison to the Great Depression, I have always found it interesting that people are certain that Keynesian policy will avert another Depression -- or even a recession. Surely one can see the failed logic of "Because we not doing what we did last time, we won't have the same result."

 

[Steadygain]

Thanks Scribbler !

I gave you 5 Stars for that.

Was hoping that's what you meant instead of blindly blasting Obama because he this or that... or not this or that... so my response was wholly meant to test that.

In all sincereity the same question stuck out to me and the way Obama dodged it. NOT A GOOD MOVE TO DO WITH ME - and no offense to him - as that would honestly be a hard one to respond to when the whole purpose of your talk is convincing everyone to push the Package.

But on his behalf it would be insane to tell everyone 'Pushing this Package through may at best slow things down but RIGHT NOW - hell is about to break loose and the worst is on its way.

ANYWAY - The truth is I think we see eye to eye - and I appreciate your posts. But had to check ya out.