David Pleasant

While the American people have varying views on the economy, one thing is abundantly clear according to the NYT/CBS poll (pdf).  Don’t come around asking for another stimulus package.

When asked if they “would favor or oppose the government spending additional money on another stimulus package,” 65 percent opposed and 27 percent favored another stimulus.

The AEI wingnuts are out in force criticizing Obama’s economic stimulus plans.

Alan D. Viard, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, told Congress recently that public works spending should not be authorized out of “the illusory hope of job gains or economic stabilization.”

“If more money is spent on infrastructure, more workers will be employed in that sector,” Mr. Viard told the House Ways and Means Committee. “In the long run, however, an increase in infrastructure spending requires a reduction in public or private spending for other goods and services. As a result, fewer workers are employed in other sectors of the economy.”

Does anybody really take the AEI seriously these days? Should anybody take the AEI seriously as long as they continue to tout luminaries such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Yoo as part of their scholarly elite?

While lawmakers are nit-picking over a $34 billion bailout for the auto industry, the wise men are saying it’s going to cost trillions to get us out of this mess.

From Bloomberg:

The one thing that isn’t shrinking in the U.S. economy these days is the size of the stimulus package that financial experts say is needed to turn it around.

With automobile sales dropping, payrolls plunging and manufacturing contracting, economists from across the political spectrum are raising the ante on how much the government should lay out. Some are now calling for at least a $1 trillion boost.

Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor who was an adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner who served in President Bill Clinton’s White House, are among those who say President- elect Barack Obama should push for a package of that size.

“They need a stimulus of $500-to-$600 billion a year for at least two years to counter what is going to be a collapse in consumption,” said Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

That number may grow. This week brought news that the economy has been in recession for a year. Tomorrow the government will release November employment data, which economists say will show another 330,000 jobs lost, the most in seven years.