PoliticsUSA: Republicans: Nu GOP 'Pledge to America'

Doing my rounds to monitor the 24-hr nuzc+cl today, I read up on my incoming email newsletters in the bizness-f+nanchels category.  I got to my favourit strait-up capital-investors daily Money Morning where Kerri Shannon, MM's Associate Editor reports, thusly:

Republicans this week outlined their plan for reform in one-page summary entitled "A Pledge to America." Republicans today hope their pledge will do for them what the "Contract with America" did for Republicans in 1994 when the GOP gained 54 House seats and regained control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

The proposal's goals include immediately canceling any unused funds from last year's $787 billion stimulus program, permanently extending the Bush tax cuts, repealing the new healthcare law, cutting $100 billion in discretionary spending, and freezing the size of the "nonsecurity" federal work force.  It also calls to end government control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [The two govt-sponsored housing-mortgage conglomerates which triggered the financial meltdown as the banking houses fell into step (voraciously, I m+t add) -- Politicarp].

The plan comes at a time when many Americans are questioning the economic policies put forth by the Obama administration. With the unemployment rate stuck near 10%, President Obama two weeks ago  announced a new six-year infrastructure plan, which says will create a "substantial number of jobs and improve the country's transport system. 

The report is usefully read in its entirety, and is recommended.

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.