Tag Archives: economy

When Economists Agree

We’ve been telling you for the last couple of weeks how economists are divided over the virtues of the stimulus bill. But, as former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and current Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw reminds us, we shouldn’t get too carried away with our skepticism of economists. …
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GOP Stimulus Myths

Do some of the Republican claims you’ve heard about the stimulus bill sound too awful to be true? We find a few that are wildly exaggerated or downright false. It’s not true that the bill contains spending for “golf carts.” It has $300 million to buy fuel-efficient vehicles, some …
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Obama’s Supporters Take to the Small Screen

The ink is still drying on the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and the government’s corresponding Web site for tracking its progress is still being programmed. But Americans United for Change, a liberal group, already is airing an ad that lauds President Obama for its passage and extols its benefits. …
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Stimulus Bill Bravado

In recent weeks, in his pitches to Congress and the public on the need to pass the economic stimulus bill, Obama has made several claims about what it would do. (Republicans, too, have made stimulus boasts of their own.) But these pronouncements are not a sure thing. Obama repeatedly said …
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When Economists Disagree, Part II

In a post last week, we explained some of the difficulties involved in trying to determine whether or not the stimulus package will work. As we said at the time: Well, for one thing, economists have very little data with which to work. There are plenty of theoretical models out …
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Will the Stimulus Work?

A lot of readers have asked us to sort through the various arguments about whether or not the stimulus bill (which, at the moment, is actually two different bills, one in the House and one in the Senate) will actually work. But we just don’t know the answer to this …
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Obama’s Speech and Those Frivolous Earmarks

President Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, and we caught several factual errors and misstatements in his remarks. See our full story on FactCheck.org for all the details. Here’s just one item we found: Obama exaggerated a bit in describing the Children’s Health Insurance Program that …
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Loss of Automaker Jobs?

Q: Would 3 million jobs be lost if U.S. automakers go under? A: The 3-million-jobs figure is based on doomsday assumptions that are unlikely to materialize. Independent economists put the job loss in the hundreds of thousands if GM and Chrysler go under. Ford has said it can survive on …
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Health Care Bill Bankruptcies

Q: What is the percentage of total personal bankruptcies caused by health care bills? A: A Harvard study published in 2005 found that about half of those who filed for bankruptcy said health care expenses, illness or related job-loss led them to do so. Twenty-seven percent cited uncovered medical bills …
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Our Disinformed Electorate

We saw more aggressive fact-checking by journalists in this election than ever before. Unfortunately, as a post-election Annenberg Public Policy Center poll confirms, millions of voters were bamboozled anyway. More than half of U.S. adults (52 percent) said the claim that Sen. Barack Obama’s tax plan would raise taxes on …
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