American Jobs Act. sigh.

Well, I commented last night on President Obama's speech to Congress on jobs on WGXC, my local radio station. I thought it worth putting down my thoughts on silicon, since I've already done all the thinking about it.

First of all, I thought that the delivery was one of the better than I've heard from President Obama since he took office. It reminded me more of candidate Obama. Maybe that's because this speech, more than the official announcement that he was running for re-election a while back, was the kick-off to his re-election campaign. He had that whole preacher cadence down, punctuating sections of the speech with the phrase "that's why you should pass this bill now." A nice touch, but one that was clearly not directed at the politicians in front of him, many of whom wouldn't support kibble for kittens if it was an Obama proposal.

In which, if you read between the lines, I foam at the mouth

Half a stimulus is better than none « Multiplier Effect

House Prices Won't Be Rising for Long

James Hamilton, at Econbrowser, notes that he's surprised by the 0.75% increase in average house prices (as measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller Index of twenty cities). He also says he's skeptical because of the backlog of unsold homes, likely increases in foreclosures, and high, rising unemployment, especially since Calculated Risk is, too. I agree that there's reason to be skeptical, especially since this rise in prices is likely to be a surge of people cashing in on the Obama stimulus package's $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers, which expires this fall. If prices continue to rise beyond that critical point, I'd say my skepticism (and CR's and Hamilton's) are wrong.

EPI says Stimulus Plan is working

In a new report "The recovery package in action", EPI researchers John Irons and Ethan Pollack lay out the details of what they see the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's impacts have been so far. Long story short, despite the fact that only 14% of the spending has happened so far, the Stimulus plan has helped to decrease the pace of job losses.
Of course, ahem, others have pointed out that although the employment effects will be large (6-8 million jobs over three years), the impact on income distribution will probably be small and come nowhere near offsetting the increases in inequality we've seen in the last two decades.