Thursday, February 12, 2009

Things That Make You Go Hmmm?

A friend of mine recently asked how I was able to blog recently without mentioning all the political goings-on, such as the illustrious stimulous (a.k.a. "spendulous" and "porkulous") package.

Truth be told, I just don't have the energy. However, yesterday morning I did see something blogworthy that just epitomizes this whole thing. On the NBC's Today Show, Meridith was interviewing an "expert" (I didn't catch his name) from MSNBC who was breaking things down for us. He said we could see the stimulous working by keeping tabs on three things: 1) Unemployment, 2) Inflation, and 3) Housing.

This is the jist of his explanation...I can't quote, because I was too confused.

MSNBC Guy - We'll see the stimulous package work when unemployment goes down. It might keep going up, but that's bound to happen. We know it will go down by seeing it come up. But it might stay up for a while. However, it will eventually come down. We're just not sure how it's going to work out.

Inflation - it's going to keep going up. But it will come down. However, the stimulous package might cause deflation, which is bad. But it might not be bad. It might be good...we just don't know.

Foreclosures will keep happening, probably even more than we've seen. But we'll know it's going to get better by seeing it get worse. Things will get worse before they get better. Or housing might rebound - we don't really know.

Meridith then asked (she looked as puzzled as I felt), "So...how long until we know it's working?"

Guy - "Well, we may see it work farily quickly, or we may not see it start to work for years...we don't really know."

Hmm. Well. Glad that's clear.

2 comments:

Stephanie said...

I felt as confused reading that guy's comments as I used to feel in economics class.

Sarah Shedenhelm said...

yeah, i saw that interview too and i asked brian if the "spendulous" made any sense or if i had just not been paying attention. it appears that it only makes sense to those that are NOT paying attention.