The conclusion of an excellent column by Colby Cosh:
In other words, the professional consensus of the best economic minds is that the stimulus probably isn’t going to stimulate a damn thing. Why, one might ask, are we bothering with it?
[Why? Because people won’t stand for a government that won’t “do something,” and politicians won’t stand for not “doing something.” – DP]
And from Andrew Coyne:
[…]
What we are witnessing is a kind of policy panic, a herdlike rush every bit as mindless as the financial panic that preceded it. If we have not gone as far as the Americans—at 2.5 per cent of GDP, even a $40-billion deficit would be dwarfed by the $2-trillion, 10-per-cent-of-GDP monster the incoming Obama administration is preparing—we have done so with even less justification. There, at least, the economic situation is such as to justify a little panic: the worst recession in at least 25 years, and possibly 70. Here, we have not as yet even met the technical definition of a recession…
While according to Governor Mark Carney:
The Bank of Canada said the economy will recover from a recession this year more quickly than in the past as credit markets and exports rebound, a view that economists said may be too optimistic.
The central bank slashed its economic growth forecast for the first quarter, saying output will shrink at a 4.8 percent annualized pace after predicting in October that it would be unchanged. Gross domestic product will shrink at a 1 percent rate in the second quarter before growing 3.8 percent next year, almost double the median pace in a Bloomberg survey of economists.
“The projected return to balance of the Canadian economy is faster than either of the recoveries following the 1981-82 and 1990-92 recessions,” the Ottawa-based central bank said today [Jan. 22]…
Help! I’m already, er, stimulated (David Akin’s blog):
The budget striptease continues
Mark C.
