EconomicsUSA: Stimulus: Had great positive impact, benefit crested and now is waning

The AGC email newsletter, SmartBrief for Aug25,2k10, is of course published by the Associated General Contractors of America; today it alerted us in this compact item, a tabbed segment "Market Update" (notice tab to the left as you scroll down):

Stimulus package pricier than previously thought

The federal economic-stimulus package is turning out to be costlier than originally estimated. The cost of the package, pegged at $787 billion in January 2009, has risen to $814 billion, according to a new congressional analysis. The analysis said that the stimulus has saved or created between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs and increased gross domestic product by as much as 4.5%. NYT (free registration)/The Associated Press (8/25)

NYT, you'll notice, attributes authorship only to the Associated Press, so it woud seem that a certain anonymity obtains in this instance. But the article is fascinating:

Stimulus to Cost $27B More Than Original Pricetag (Aug24,2K10). Filed at 6:06 p.m. ET.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's massive stimulus measure has created or saved as many as 3.3 million jobs and continues to boost economic growth in the second half of 2010, but it's come at a higher pricetag than originally billed.

Congressional analysts released new figures Tuesday estimating that the law enacted in January of 2009 -- then projected to cost $787 billion over a decade -- would cost $814 billion. That's still lower than the Congressional Budget Office estimated in January, when it said the measure would cost $862 billion.

The report comes 10 weeks before midterm congressional elections in which Republicans are hammering Democrats and Obama on the economy, charging they've pushed runaway spending without creating promised jobs.

The analysis credits the stimulus measure with increasing the number of people employed somewhere between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs between April and June -- and boosting the gross domestic product by as much as 4.5 percent. The figures are slightly less rosy than the picture Obama's economic advisers painted last month, when they said the stimulus law had ''raised employment by 2.5-to-3.6 million relative to what it otherwise would have been'' during that period.

So we've now got an upward trend up in many economic sectors, and in diverse industries, the vaunted "Recovery," and the whole picture immersed in the color of joblessness. And the grinding ongoing creation of "discouraged workers" who stop even looking for jobs.

Not good enuff!, President Obama.

--EconoMix

See recent post on key indicator/s of economic health.