Obama Economist Romer - Wishful Thinking?

Do you ever wonder if economics has gone by the wayside and now it's all simply consumer confidence, public relations and wishful thinking?

Obama Economist Christina Romer via Financial Times:

The US economy will feel a substantial boost from the Obama administration’s emergency spending package over the next few months, says Christina Romer, a senior White House official, who has warned against tightening monetary and fiscal policy before recovery is well established.

We are going to get some serious oomph from the stimulus, there is the inventory cycle and I believe there is some pent-up demand by consumers.

Really? Hmmm, how can that be if one is busy awarding contracts via the same corrupt system that Iraq war contracts were administered, enabling the offshore outsourcing of jobs and not targeting states which most need the jobs?

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Let me just add

I don't think we can rely on the inventory cycle as much as the past because we just don't manufacture stuff.

I agree with Calculated Risk. This is all wishful thinking until residential investment and personal consumption expenditures come back. That won't happen for a while - in my guesstimation.

CR

didn't say it was wishful thinking. I did. While CR calls it out and says this estimate is incorrect, what is driving me nuts is this constant focus on public relations and public perception instead of sound policy with sound statistics.

Seriously, this is a DLC/Rubins/Summers kind of trick and has been going on for a long, long time...they focus in on media/PR/marketing instead of simply writing and enacting the kind of policy that bears itself out from analysis.

I mean seriously, they are still using this "thumb in the air" 1% of GDP Stimulus implies 1 million jobs...

well, that's pure bullshit frankly. They firstly did not limit Stimulus to domestic expenditure only (i.e. hire U.S. citizens, etc.) and also due to these MNCs operating around the globe plus enabling some of them to obtain Stimulus contracts, that rule of thumb also isn't valid.

But instead of realizing that and fine tuning stimulus acccordingly, i.e. getting in line with true Keynesian policy...

we just get muddled spin and PR.