I came across a few articles about the economy that show the sad state of economic analysis in the media these days.

1. The stimulus is working — just not for you by Bruce Yandle.

   My comments on this article were:

   It all made sense until we got to “Had we wanted to stimulate the entire economy we would have seen tax cuts for all employers and employees, a sure-fire way to put money in the pockets of everybody. So while the sectors that were targeted with trickle-down money have done relatively well, the everyman is still looking for a better day.”

   With corporations sitting on approximately $800 billion in cash that they are not putting to work, why would we think giving them more cash in the form of tax cuts would have had any effect? Well it would have had an effect, it would have taken even more liquidity out of the economy and put it under corporate mattresses.

   Bruce Yandle seems able to criticize someone else’s policy, but he is not able to look at his own policy prescription with the same lack of bias.

   Did Bruce Yandle really expect anything from the bubble bloated construction industry but a decline after the bubble burst?

2. They Go or Obama Goes by Robert Scheer

   A comment on this post made a stronger accusation about companies sitting on cash than I did

3. A Reply to Jonathan Chait on Stimulus by Jim Manzi

   I guess the thing that at first disturbed me most about this piece is that the original link to this item was titled Jim Manzi: The Fatal Flaw in the Case for Stimulus Spending. The item does not live up to this title.

   Another thing that disturbs me is that the analysis of the projects on which the stimulus money was spent doesn’t seem to take into account that these projects were needed and had been previously short-changed by the free market and government underspending. In other words, there was no recognition of the shift from bubble creating spending to necessary spending.