5 Years Later - What Did Obama's "American Recovery & Reinvestment Act" Achieve?
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/17/2014 19:49 -0500

The 17th of February, 2014, marked the annual observation of George Washington's birthday and the 5th anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Given that is has been half a decade since President Obama signed that bill into law, it would not surprise me if you did not immediately recognize what it entailed. However, the term "Government Bailout" will certainly jolt your recollection.

The WSJ penned a great opener:

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"The $830 billion spending blowout was sold by the White House as a way to keep unemployment from rising above 8%. But the stimulus would fail on its own terms. 2009 marked the first of four straight years when unemployment averaged more than 8%. And of course the unemployment rate would have been even worse in those years and still today if so many people had not quit the labor force, driving labor-participation rates to 1970s levels."

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Given that Governments are generally the worst allocators of capital it should come as no real surprise that the money was squandered on non-productive investments.

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"$783,000 was spent on a study of why young people consume malt liquor and marijuana. $92,000 went to the Army Corps of Engineers for costumes for mascots like Bobber the Water Safety Dog. $219,000 funded a study of college 'hookups.'"

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If we apply the total of all government interventions into the same analysis as above, we find a far more disappointing result.



At a cost of $19.90 for each dollar of economic growth, almost $8 million for each job created and a loss of nearly $600,000 of fixed investment, it is hard to suggest that the government interventions have been successful. The Wall Street journal really summed it up best

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"The failure of the stimulus was a failure of the neo-Keynesian belief that economies can be jolted into action by a wave of government spending. In fact, people are smart enough to realize that every dollar poured into the economy via government spending must eventually be taken out of the productive economy in the form of taxes. The way to jolt an economy to life and to sustain long-term growth is to create more incentives for people to work, save and invest. Let's hope Washington's next stimulus plan is aimed at reducing the tax and regulatory burden on American job creators."

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More including more charts:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-17...ent-act-achieve