Biden: Meet The Press- "everyone guessed wrong"

[masuki bance]

Biden tells "Meet the Press" that "everyone guessed wrong" on the impact of the stimulus, economy was worse off than anyone thought.

Backs away from the estimate that the funds could create or save 3.5 million jobs, instead promises 600,000 by the end of the summer.

http://thepage.time.com/2009/06/14/stimulus-apologies/

...Biden said the White House is keenly aware of the gap between the rhetoric used to sell fast passage of the legislation and the reality that has 14.5 million people unemployed.

"No one realized how bad the economy was. The projections, in fact, turned out to be worse. But we took the mainstream model as to what we thought — and everyone else thought — the unemployment rate would be," Biden said.

Those projects came from a report co-written by Biden's chief economist, Jared Bernstein. Last week, Bernstein briefed reporters on the stimulus spending and insisted the report was in line with others' research, but not aligned with reality.

"At the time our forecast seemed reasonable. Now, looking back, it was clearly too optimistic," he told reporters last Monday....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090614/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_biden_stimulus

[grasswire]

1. and everyone thought there were WMDs

I love Joe Biden. I hate to see this lame excuse from him.

Not everyone guessed wrong.

Tell the truth, Joe. Tell the people the truth.

[dkf]

2. I still don't understand why it is taking so long to spend the stimulus

Someone really screwed that up.

[w4rma]

4. Look at Obama/Biden's economic team. How could they not screw it up? (nt)

[ThomCat]

17. Exactly! The same people who created the problem were given

all that money to try to fix the problem. All they did was give their friends huge amounts of money to patch up holes in their bank accounts. Only very tiny amounts of money went to actually fixing the economy. :(

[w4rma]

3. So how many jobs was the TARP money supposed to create? Why was more money spent on it? (nt)

[masuki bance]

6. Create or save. nt

[Davis_X_Machina]

8. The TARP money...

...was not meant to create jobs. It was meant to be sure we still had a banking system.

Apples and oranges.

[Zynx]

9. Systemic bank failure would have probably cost between 15-20 million more jobs

than have been lost so far just for starters. It was a serious risk in the fall during the period of completely frozen credit markets and the absolute inability of banks to raise money in the private market. As the situation has stabilized, banks are able to raise equity in the private market now and the need for government capital infusions has diminished. As a result TARP is starting to be paid back.

Even the most pessimistic economists, such as Roubini, say that TARP was necessary.

[KoKo]

5. "Who could have known?" n/t

[villager]

7. "Who could have known being in the back pocket of corporations wouldn't help the little guy!?"

n/t

[Papa Boule]

10. These replies. Heh. n/t

[high density]

11. Actually Joe I'm pretty sure a lot of people were calling for $2 trillion in stimulus

But instead the Democrats I voted for went limp-dicked on yet another issue and here we are.

[old mark]

12. The GOP voted to cut the stimulus and change some of the programs,

even argued that it was not necessary.
TARP money will be paid back, in part anyway, starting soon.

I thought some of the stimulus was already going out, and more will be going out this summer to create those infrastructure jobs.

mark

[dkf]

15. It doesn't matter how big it was supposed to be because

they would have spent the same amount upfront anyway. The problem is in the delivery.

[SamCooke]

13. This is going to be a big story. Biden shouldn't have said this. I question this guy's

intelligence some times. He's basically saying this has already failed, when makes it useless.

[ErinBerin84]

14. he's NOT saying the stimulus failed

The LA Times did an article where some of Obama's economic advisors said that they underestimated the 4th quarter GDP, which is why the unemployment rate got to 9.4% instead of 8%. The framing of the LA Times article however was quoting RW economists saying that the stimulus FAILED (aka, more magical tax cuts would have somehow lowered the unemployment rate, in their opinon), when in actuality, it makes the case for MORE stimulus. I believe that the stimulus should have been bigger, but if we accept the RW framing of this even though Biden isn't saying anything that the administration hasn't said, we won't get it.


http://mediamatters.org/research/200906090019

[jillan]

16. If you read the whole article, and not get all up in arms about the scary headline they used

You will read that Biden was saying that no one could GUESS how bad the economy was at the time the stim was written.

Meaning: NO ONE COULD HAVE IMAGINED WHAT A MESS BUSH LEFT US.

I'm sure that MTP has the interview taped somewhere if you want to watch it and see the entire segment of him discussing the economy.



I am soooooooooo sick and tired of people misquoting Biden. It's like a public sport....Biden gaffe watching - and if he doesn't make one, we'll just pretend that he did by taking a few words out of a sentence and attach our own meaning to those words.

ENOUGH!

[bvar22]

18. No, Joe. Not everybody "guessed wrong".

But you and your administration sure "guessed wrong".

There were PLENTY of people screaming that the trickle down stimulus was too small, to "watered down", and too mis-applied to have much effect.
Those people were RIGHT.
YOU and your "Centrist" CorpoFriends were WRONG...again.

The US Auto industry didn't need a bailout.
The US Auto Industry needed a multi hundred Billion dollar CONTRACT to design, retool, and build a Rapid Rail Transportation and Freight system using American Made Products.

Now THAT would be a stimulus that would have had an immediate impact on ALL of America....
AND Americans would have had something useful to show for their money.

[GeorgeGist]

19. Guessing is not a plan.