Latest GDP figures and the stimulus act

GDP fell by 1% last quarter according to today's BEA report. That was about what everyone expected and signals that the end of the recession is near (or even upon us; there's speculation out there that when the dust clears June 2009 will be declared the trough). Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy says the stimulus bill passed in February (the ARRA) had a big effect:

Despite the overall contraction, the fingerprints of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act could be seen in some aspect of today’s report. Federal government spending grew at an 11% rate in the quarter, adding roughly 0.8% to overall GDP. State and local government spending grew at a 2.4% annual rate, the fastest growth since the middle of 2007. It is clear that the large amount of state aid contained in the ARRA made this growth possible.

Furthermore, real (inflation-adjusted) disposable personal income rose by 3.2% in the quarter, after rising by only 1% in the previous quarter. A large contribution to this increase was made by the Making Work Pay tax credit passed in conjunction with the ARRA, as this was the first full quarter that the credit was in effect. Inflation-adjusted transfer payments (including a one-time payment to Social Security recipients) rose at an annual rate of over 6% in the quarter as well.

This increase in disposable personal incomes did not translate into a sharp boost in consumption spending because the personal savings rate jumped again — rising to 5.2% in the second quarter, up from 4% in the previous quarter. This slippage between personal incomes and consumption spending caused by a rising savings rate makes plain that, instead of focusing on even more tax cuts, it was wise to make sure that much of the ARRA was devoted to direct public investment spending. The public investment spending in the ARRA, while not having a significant impact in the second quarter, will provide an even stronger boost to the economy in quarters to come.

The consensus of macroeconomic forecasters is that ARRA contributed roughly 3% to annualized growth rates in the second quarter. This means that absent its effects, economic performance would have resembled that of the previous three quarters, when the economy contracted at an average annual rate of 4.9%. In short, the recovery act turned this quarter’s economic performance from disastrous to merely bad. This is no small achievement, but with even more public relief and investments, the U.S. economy could do much better.

I find these numbers a bit too large to be believed, but what do I know?

Beer summit

A pox on all their houses.

And for the record, Obama is opting for a Bud Lite, while Gates is said to be partial to Red Stripe from Jamaica. Crowley's preference is for Blue Moon, a Belgian-Style beer, made by Coors.

Obama: No way he's a regular Bud Lite drinker. He's got a stash of microbrews in the fridge (maybe some selections from his hometown), or he could be a wine-only guy. David Axilrod told him he'd best not be seen hoisting a Goose Island Pere Jacques, lest his poll numbers drop another 20 points.

Crowley: Chump. Thinks he's getting quality but corporate America has bamboozled him. When will the white working class learn to drink its interests?

Gates: Poseur. Yeah, the Alphonse Fletcher Professor at Harvard University is down with the struggling masses in the shantytowns of Kingston. Wait, I think I have an old picture of heir professor in my files:

Henry Louis Gates, Kingston, Jamaica, 1973

For the record, if Barack invites me to 1600 PA Ave. for a beer, I'm having the Dogfishhead Midas Touch - recipe reconstructed from the 2700-year-old tomb of King Midas. Or pick me up a growler from this brewery. It'd better be fresh!

The dangers of socialized medicine

From Sadly, No:

Also, You Are More Likely To Be Killed By A Sasquatch There

Via Think Progress, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Church):

When you tell people that the mortality rate in Canada is 25% higher for breast cancer, 18% higher for prostate cancer, you know, they say why in the world would we emulate a system like that? This is life threatening.

And then when you tell those people that the mortality rate for mortality is 3% higher in the United States, they’re all, so why in the world did you give me that line of bullshit about breast cancer and prostrates, you stone-faced Okie gargoyle?

Read the post for some interesting comparative stats.

Breaking news from my former college roommate

And to think I knew him when he would spend his evenings storming around the house with his pants around his knees, decrying his inability to get a date (not his original choice of words). Now he's breaking major stories for Newsweek:

Independent’s Day
Obama doesn't want to look back, but Attorney General Eric Holder may probe Bush-era torture anyway.
By Daniel Klaidman NEWSWEEK
Published Jul 11, 2009

But Emanuel's agitated presence hangs over the building—"the wrath of Rahm," one Justice lawyer calls it—and he is clearly on the minds of Holder and his aides as they weigh whether to launch a probe into the Bush administration's interrogation policies.

Holder began to review those policies in April. As he pored over reports and listened to briefings, he became increasingly troubled. There were startling indications that some interrogators had gone far beyond what had been authorized in the legal opinions issued by the Justice Department, which were themselves controversial. He told one intimate that what he saw "turned my stomach."

It was soon clear to Holder that he might have to launch an investigation to determine whether crimes were committed under the Bush administration and prosecutions warranted. The obstacles were obvious. For a new administration to reach back and investigate its predecessor is rare, if not unprecedented. After having been deeply involved in the decision to authorize Ken Starr to investigate Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, Holder well knew how politicized things could get. He worried about the impact on the CIA, whose operatives would be at the center of any probe. And he could clearly read the signals coming out of the White House. President Obama had already deflected the left wing of his party and human-rights organizations by saying, "We should be looking forward and not backwards" when it came to Bush-era abuses...

Back from summer vacation, round 1

Some thoughts on returning from our family trip to Maine and Vermont:

- We travelled through three states that have legalized gay marriage. I had expected gangs of armed gays to stop us at roadblocks forcing us to gay marry. I was pleasantly surprised that this did not happen. In fact, despite our trip through these states that have been assaulting marriage, our own heterosexual marriage seems to have held up just fine. I'm beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about...

- Memo to Obama Administration: the signs along the highway trumpeting your administration's efforts to "put America back to work" should be erected AFTER the construction is completed, not during. It's not really to your benefit to remind vacationing motorists who is responsible for the traffic jam they're sitting in.

- For the most part I avoided the news to concentrate on fishin' and visitin'. It was comforting to learn on my return that the media has not lost its knack for wallowing in triviality. Last night CNN covered the Michael Jackson memorial service (wasn't that a week ago?). On the report that Dick Cheney personally ordered the CIA to conceal a still-unidentified covert operation from Congress, CNN brought in James Carville and Mary Matalin for analysis - neither of whom seemed to know anything at all about the program, the CIA, or even the Times story that broke the news. Matalin's role was to simply make stuff up. She actually said that the breaking of this story spelled trouble for the Obama Administration because it was clear that this leak was intended to deflect attention from his faltering domestic agenda. Really. And to cap it off, CNN reported the non-launching of the space shuttle live from Cape Canaveral. Stirring video of a motionless shuttle on its launching pad. Hey CNN, breaking news: today pigs did not fly out of my butt! Where are the cameras?

Go hike the Appalachian trail!

First CBS News, taking its cues from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (known for its "CO2: They call it pollution, we call it life!" ads), alerts the public to the EPA's suppression of an internal document calling global warming into question. The people at RealClimate look at the document in question and fall on the floor laughing:

So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at. Seriously, if that’s the best they can do, the EPA’s ruling is on pretty safe ground.

If I were the authors, I’d suppress this myself, and then go for a long hike on the Appalachian Trail…