It is amazing what people are willing to believe, even when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I found this article to be both humorous and sad. Sad because the Obama administration tells a flat out lie and the pliant media run to repeat it without challenge, and too many actually will believe it:

The US economy will feel a substantial boost from the Obama administration’s emergency spending package over the next few months, says Christina Romer, a senior White House official, who has warned against tightening monetary and fiscal policy before recovery is well established.

Ms Romer, chairman of the US president’s council of econ omic advisers, told the Financial Times in an interview she was “more optimistic” that the economy was close to stabilisation.

What a bunch of crap. The liberals think the bloated federal bureaucracy is closing to belching out a couple hundred thousand jobs (as we have over 6 million unemployed and rising). They are truly naive. Here is the picture of the federal stimulus money as being reported by 6 government agencies I keep track of.

In the first graph there are 4 sets of columns showing: (from left to right) (1) the amount budgeted for stimulus programs, (2) the amount allocated to specific programs, (3) the amount spent creating jobs and (4) the amount unspent from the total budget. (click image to enlarge)

As everyone can see much of the money has not even been assigned to programs (an arduous but legally required process to make sure programs are valid). The second chart translates the dollar amounts for the last three sets of columns into percentages of the budgeted amounts. (click image to enlarge)

Bottom line: 99% of the job-creating money for these departments/agencies is stuck in the government coffers – doing nothing. Here’s the summary across all 6:

• $105 billion was budgeted across the organizations to start new programs and create jobs (the largest amounts going  to the Departments of Energy and Transportation)
• Of that, only $22.7 billion as even been allocated to programs to be spent (21.5%)
• The total amount spent to date on stimulus programs: $0.350 billion has been spent stimulating the economy. A paltry 0.33%.

I was going to update these charts this weekend, but strangely the administration has not provided any new data for over a week now and it is pointless to keep showing 99% of the stimulus money left unspent week after week.

What is a reality is the fact the lack of stimulus has left us with record unemployment which, under the rosiest BS from the administration, will stop getting worse but will stabilize in this economic hole. With planned tax increases and record deficits for as long as some us will be alive, we will be lucky if we do stabilize:

Now comes the CBO with yet more news of the sort that neither Capitol Hill nor the White House is likely to welcome: its freshly released report on the federal government’s long-term financial situation. To put it bluntly, the fiscal policy of the United States is unsustainable. Debt is growing faster than gross domestic product. Under the CBO’s most realistic scenario, the publicly held debt of the U.S. government will reach 82 percent of GDP by 2019 — roughly double what it was in 2008. By 2026, spiraling interest payments would push the debt above its all-time peak (set just after World War II) of 113 percent of GDP. It would reach 200 percent of GDP in 2038.

This huge mass of debt, which would stifle economic growth and reduce the American standard of living, can be avoided only through spending cuts, tax increases or some combination of the two. And the longer government waits to get its financial house in order, the more it will cost to do so, the CBO says.

What is Obama doing? Hawking new light bulbs. Last week’s unemployment numbers were staggering to read:

In the week ending June 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 627,000, an increase of 15,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 612,000.

…

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending June 13 was 6,738,000, an increase of 29,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,709,000. 

well over 600,000 NEW claims for unemployment, and nearly 7 million people on unemployment insurance (probably 3 times as many unemployed or underemployed). And Obama is hawking light bulbs and his administration claims the stimulus money will now magically appear after nearly 7 months? Who is he kidding? 

They say California leads the nation. Well guess were its heading:

Economic forecasters predict California will lose another 200,000 jobs before the recession eases.The University of the Pacific’s Business Forecasting Center projects the state’s unemployment rate will peak at 12.3 percent early next year and be stuck in double digits through 2011.

Statewide unemployment reached a modern record of 11.5 percent in May.

We are talking YEARS of this level of economic pain. Years!

But don’t worry about the Pols in DC – they seemed to be able to take care of themselves:

As financial markets tumbled and the government worked to stave off panic by pumping billions of dollars into banks last fall, several members of Congress who oversee the banking industry were grabbing up or dumping bank stocks. 

Anticipating bargains or profits or just trying to unload before the bottom fell out, these members of the House Financial Services Committee or brokers on their behalf were buying and selling stocks including Bank of America and Citigroup — some of the very corporations their committee would later rap for greed, a Plain Dealer examination of congressional stock market transactions shows.

Financial disclosure records show that some of these Financial Services Committee members, including Ohio Rep. Charlie Wilson, made bank stock trades on the same day the banks were getting a government bailout from a program Congress approved. The transactions may not have been illegal or against congressional rules, but securities attorneys and congressional watchdog groups say they raise flags about the appearance of conflicts of interest.

Anyone dumb enough to believe the media spin about politicians coming to save the world probably deserve a harsh lesson in reality. And we apparently are going to get one. A really harsh one.

Update: Presidential BS spewer Gibbs says we should judge the stimulus package failure now:

H/T Allah Pundit. As of May’s record shattering unemployment numbers it is easy to give the liberal economic stimulus plan a failing grade. And I will bet the June numbers coming out in two weeks show even more decline.

What is really scary is to look at the deficit projections. The Obama administration claimed we would be seeing solid growth by the end of this calendar year. Clearly this will not happen. Which means our deficit will be larger than the $1.8 TRILLION projected. That original rosy projection equates to $6,000 for every man, woman and child in the country – which would have been better spent as a tax cut! But no, now we have deficits, high unemployment, rising energy costs and tax increases coming.

How is that Change and Hope thing working for you all?