The Wall Street Journal reports, Summers To GOP's Boehner: Recovery Act Is Working. The part that got me was this, "Boehner responded quickly Monday. 'Where are the jobs?,' he said in a statement. 'In February, Mr. Summers himself said Americans would see the effects of the stimulus 'almost immediately' but since it took effect our economy has lost roughly three million jobs and more families and small businesses are struggling than ever before.'"
Now I know the answer to this, but at least the AP had more. "Summers replied that the $787 billion stimulus package that Congress passed at Obama's urging contained a mix of spending and tax relief that helped avert a worse economic downturn. He said that while unemployment now stands at 9.8 percent, the pace of job losses is decreasing from an average of 691,000 jobs per month in the first quarter of this year to a 256,000 monthly average in the third quarter."
I guess the WSJ couldn't be bothered to report the rest of Summers' reply. Of course the next thing is if the stimulus did this, why not spend more to cover the rest of the job losses? Or at least explain why. It's not like a prominent Nobel prize winning New York Times columnist (amongst others) hasn't for months been saying that the stimulus is too small. I'm still waiting for an answer to that.
Reuters reports that Summers also said, Banks shouldn't choose regulator. "He said the practice of "charter flipping," in order to report to a particular regulator, encouraged lax standards and higher capital and leverage rules were needed to make the financial system more resilient in times of crisis." I wonder how he feels about Chris Dodd's proposal to have one regulating body which would prevent this?
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