Today at 11AM Eastern, James Pethokoukis talks about taxes, the economy, and why cash for clunkers is Obamanomics in microcosm.
Here is James last April on Bloggingheads talking about credit default swaps:
Related reading,
Cash For Clunkers: Borrowing From Future Growth?
Douglas Lee of the consulting firm Economics from Washington says the quick action by Congress and the Obama administration will turn the moderate recovery expected for the second half of 2009 into a W-shaped pattern: contraction in gross domestic product in the second quarter, positive growth in the third quarter, then a dip into negative territory again in the fourth quarter.
His math: Auto sales were running at 750,000 to 850,000 units per month, and the $3 billion program would fund an additional 200,000 to 250,000 per month for three months. (The calculation includes a small allowance for cars that would’ve been purchased anyway.) That sends the annual selling rate for one quarter from between 9 million and 10 million to around 11.5 million to 13 million. It would add an annualized $50 billion to third-quarter consumption, or more than two percentage points to consumer spending growth. (That may understate the impact, he notes, because even people who do not qualify are being drawn into auto showrooms and buying new cars anyway through other incentives.)
But, as many have noted, the program also leads to speeding up many sales that would’ve happened anyway in late 2009 or early 2010. After adding $50 billion to third-quarter consumption, Lee says, you can subtract about $25 billion in the third quarter. The end result under his forecast: third-quarter growth of 2.5% to 3.5%, followed by a fourth-quarter decline of 1.5% to 2%. In other words, more fodder for talk about a double-dip recession.
UPDATE
Denny has the video of a perfectly good Volvo being destroyed:
Insane.
It looks like a S40 so what is being destroyed is a perfectly good Ford Focus