...then we won't have to spend the remaining hundreds of billions of it that have yet to be spent at all, right?

The stimulus "fixed" everything, so the economy should be fine all on its own.

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6339642/Ex-FSA-chief-Sir-Howard-Davies-sees-dramatic-risks-for-Britain.html

Extrapolate and apply to US as required.

Any recovery with jobs is predicated on the demise of the dollar, so that Americans can go back to the factories, (at global wages similar to those in China). Rather than jousting the administration over phony numbers, some of these writers should take them to task for their dollar policy, (same as Bush by the way), and what that dollar policy means. There is a lot to be said about that, most analysts haven't considered the razor thin margins China's manufacturing sector maintains. US manufacturing can never compete at that level. Additionally the US workplace is over educated, and will never warm to those old repetitive jobs, and our current immigration policy punishes the people who would come here and do this work. The stimulus isn't going to work, but it was government stimulating government in the first place. Fortunately for the left the intellectuals on the right think Americans should take menial jobs, with no health care, and the consequences be damned because that is how this great country was built. The right has a special talent for self mockery, so mock on George Will. Those who mock the self mocking, well, I leave that to you.

So what's up with that?

It's called keeping up with changing economic data, dumbfuck... it's what grownups do...

DUH

Why does anyone give these dumbfuck conservatard pundits the time of day when they've been consistently wrong about every major issue for the last sixty years?

George Will even manages to make baseball boring... what a pathetic dicksleeve.

Mr. Leonard, I give up. On reading you that is.

Sir, with all due respect, you have got to be one of the worst writers attempting to cover economic news anywhere. You glom onto utter crap as though it means something. You don't connect the dots. You don't think.

Do you know that the highest rates of economic growth in the United States in at least the last hundred years (and maybe ever) occurred during the midst of the Great Depression? Do you know that the GDP number you just latched onto occurred in a a quarter when the Fed was pumping massive amounts into the economy? When the "cash for clunkers" program was in full swing? Do you know anything at all?

This day-to-day see saw you're on is either a sign of laziness of thought or a sign of a less than sharp mind.

Economic growth could be on a serious rebound? Wishful thinking. You've been there and done that repeatedly over the last year. Do you never learn?

It doesn't matter to me personally what you write or don't write. I just hate to see you do such a disservice to your readers who may not know better than to take you seriously. I do know that I am a reader of yours no longer.

Cash for Clunkers increased car sales for 2 months. While it may have robbed some sales, it created others. The first-time home-buyer credit increased house sales for several months. While some of this is definately due to the crash in housing prices, not all buys are on distressed properties. The TARP stimulas monies are filtering into road construction in my state, Minnesota. The bank bailout bailed out some of the big banks, resulting in an increase in the stock market.

These are all Keynesian measures. For the Right-Republican and Ron Paul cretins who believe government should 'get out of economics' (like the free market, another modern myth) it must come as a dull surprise that capitalism CANNNOT survive on it's own. It's needs a capitalist government using debt and taxpayer monies to survive.

The crash in the dollar is helping export industries, but of course, hurting importers. Not sure if this is a wash or not. In the long run, it will lead to a weaker imperialist economy if our currency does not 'rule.'

Of course, 'who benefits' from these Keynesian measures is the key issue. Who benefits? We know that most of the money has been thrown at the capitalists themselves, and their highly paid capital markets bankers, traders and salespeople on Wall Street. Some normal individuals have had their jobs saved, or bought a house, or traded in a crap car. But given the statistics for the working class as a whole, unemployment especially, this Keynesianism is for the upper class and their stock values.

The moderate Republicans and Democrats are clapping.

I would agree with Leonard and Baker that George Will's column shows an amazingly ignorant grasp of economics. In further reviewing Will's column, I also find laughable his contention that yet another round of government-sponsored economic stimulus would bring the number of packages to three -- I am not sure how Will can count the Bush Administration's ill-considered, naive and almost condescending attempt at shoring up a flagging economy with a $250 check to all taxpayers a legitimate "stimulus package".

Will seems to consistently criticize what he perceives to be "government handouts" when this feebly lame "stimulus package" was exactly that -- an untargeted and ill-considered government handout that did nothing in attempting to provide any constructive stimulus through incentivizing infrastructure upgrades or assistance to education and training.

I suppose if you want to lump the Bush "stimulus" in with the more intelligently considered one as envisioned by the current administration, then maybe you could say that the next round will be round three. However, I would prefer to simply thank the Bushies for the check and give Obama the credit for coming up with a more realistic and workable stimulus answer to our economic woes.

So the 'data' made a sea-change from last Thursday to now? Hmmm. Curious. I guess not even Salon is the unsleeping eye it claims to be.

His sheer pomposity turns me off. Carried weekly in my red state daily newspaper, which used to be somewhat liberal (it was a Knight-Ridder paper;now a McClatchey), along with a whole other plethora of conservative columnists that includes only ONE liberal, Eugene Robinson. A week ago his column was about the inability of "liberals to play nicely with other" in an entirely local dispute about speed bumps. He conflated the whole thing into a major character flaw of ALL liberals equivalent to and no less angry than that which was on display from conservatives at the various Town Hall meetings. Notwithstanding that he painted with an entirely too broad brush and made the assumption that all the locals were liberals, if only because this was Chevy Chase, D.C.

He really is a partisan hack who tries to couch his arguments and statements in pseudo-intellectualism. Not! Cannot bear to watch the ABC Sunday morning show with George S solely because of his continued presence.