Stimulus Not Big Enough to Save Us: Krugman

Pundits are constantly complaining that Barack Obama’s stimulus is too big and too ambitious, but Paul Krugman has a different complaint: It’s too small. Obama’s promise that the bill will create or save 3.5 million jobs by 2010 “looks underwhelming to say the least,” given that the economy is already down 4.4 million jobs, and losing another 600,000 by the month.

But Obama doesn’t seem to realize he’s behind; he recently said he expects to have “the pillars in place for recovery this year,” and dismissed calls for more decisive bank action as coming from “blogs.” Eventually he’ll come around, Krugman thinks, but by then his economic policies will appear to have failed, and Congress might not give him the money. “As a result, the recession rages on.” (More Barack Obama stories.)