When "President for a while" Barack Obama makes the claim that his stimulus package has "saved" jobs, he is "flat out" lying, says Tony Fratto.
Fratto, who is a former White House spokesman, says that there is simply no data whatsoever upon which that claim can be credibly made.
"What causes the jaw to drop is not just the breathtaking deception of
the claim, but the gullibility of the Washington press corps to
continue reporting it.
Here's an important note to my friends in the news media: the White House has absolutely no earthly clue how many job losses have been prevented because of the stimulus bill. None. Not Christina Romer. Not Jared Bernstein. Not Austen Goolsbee.
To understand just how unknowable this data point is, it's not necessary to be an economist, a mathematician or a statistician.
That is, the best employment statisticians the world has ever known, people whose lives are dedicated to employment data, conducting labor surveys and research, constantly refining their complex models, have a difficult time telling you how many jobs were created in the PAST!
Here's an important note to my friends in the news media: the White House has absolutely no earthly clue how many job losses have been prevented because of the stimulus bill. None. Not Christina Romer. Not Jared Bernstein. Not Austen Goolsbee.
To understand just how unknowable this data point is, it's not necessary to be an economist, a mathematician or a statistician.
That is, the best employment statisticians the world has ever known, people whose lives are dedicated to employment data, conducting labor surveys and research, constantly refining their complex models, have a difficult time telling you how many jobs were created in the PAST!
In fact, monthly BLS revisions of past job creation estimates are routinely off by tens of thousands of jobs, and on occasion by more than a hundred thousand jobs. The annual benchmark surveys always reset employment levels by hundreds of thousands of jobs.
And we're supposed to believe that the Council of Economic advisors have acquired the clairvoyant ability to estimate payrolls in the future? Please." [CNBC]
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