This is what we should call: BLATHERING FROM INCOMPETENTS

Why is averyone listening to the lies, but there is so little questioning of anything, substantively?

Bernanke is the same expert who only last year told Congress wonderful fairytales about housing, the markets, and the economy just as the bubble was beginning its implosion.

Apply the controls available, without inventing new ones, and refrain from creating a Nation dependent on its government (through politicized cronyism) for financial success. Prosperity has no address on that road.

http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2009/07/ber…

Make changes at the top and change the structure over money’s controls.

So please, convince me this is not just faith healing with $700B worth of rosary beads. Under what circumstances would you conclude the stimulus did not help and was the wrong approach?

I agree with you there…. however I don't agree with your conclusion. The economy needed the stimulus plan as quickly as possible so it would take effect sooner rather than later. If the plan is passed in Feb. then the economy would feel the effects sooner then if the plan had been debated for six more months. If the GOP had their was the plan would never have passed, so there would never have been any benefit from the plan.

To be clear…. I don't know how effective the plan will be (and as I noted in my early comment I'd like to wait a year to see how the economy is going)… but the plan has undoubtedly kept some people in their jobs and has enable others to be hired. Whether it will have the desired effect on the economy as a whole has yet to be seen. But many people have jobs because of the plan. If the GOP had their way and the plan never passed, then those people would be adding to the unemployment rate. Perhaps incrementally, but…. a little increment here… a little increment there and soon you have 10% unemployment.

I think “jolt” is a word Biden uses and I like to see the personality of people come out in speeches.

Obama has said all along that it will take months for the economy to recover. I am not sure how much I want to get into this but…. I've told the Rush-supporting, Obama-hating Republican people that Obama's recovery plan will take months to take effect. (This was back in Jan/Feb)….

First the recovery plan had to be agreed up, then funded, then disbursed to the various localities, agencies and other recipients. Then they would have to study it, decide how they could spend it within the parameters of the plan and then hire people or otherwise spend the money. Some recipients might be able to put the money to good use immediately, for others it would take time. I never saw the stimulus plan as a quick jolt.

So it seems to me that if the reporters are trying to make a case for inconsistency, and if the Obama administration has made previous statements that the plan WAS a jolt, then Obama's administration has been consistent in one thing: being inconsistent.

But for me, Biden's most recent comments (above) are consistent with how I have always viewed the recovery plan, which is as a long-term solution.

I'll also admit that I really haven't been keeping a close eye on every word that the administration says around this. Because I view the plan as a long-term solution, mostly what is said now is the right attacking Obama on everything around this that they can. ANd we are talking about Republicans protesting the Obama administration…. Their protests can only go so far before they start falling on deaf ears. Particularly since that is the strategy of the GOP these days: protest anything Obama, regardless of its merits.

I'd like to see where the economy and unemployment figures are a year from now before passing any judgement on the plan. Though to be frank, I don't think the unemployment will have improved that much….

Now later Biden is trying to argue the stimulus was meant to be a gradual steady influence on the economy. That definitely was not the argument we heard in February from Obama.

As far as the makeup of the stimulus package a lot of it seems to be in essence turning state debt into federal, something that I can't see is much of a stimulus.

When you have to get that convoluted to make the new words fit the old words, perhaps it is time for Occam's Razor. And the simplest explanation is that it was sold as “X”, and now that it is not performing as promised/desired, backtracking and muddling of the message is the order of the day.