The only problem with the stimulus package was that it should have been bigger, since it created so many jobs but could have created more.

All in all, do you think Barack Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush, or do you think Bush was a better president than Obama has been?

Obama better 57%
Bush better 34%
No difference/both the same (vol.) 6%
No opinion 2%

Obama’s handling of the economy: 46% approve, 54% disapprove.
Obama’s handling of Afghanistan: 42% approve, 56% disapprove.
Obama’s handling of illegal immigration: 36% approve, 58% disapprove.
Obama’s handling of the federal deficit: 39% approve, 60% disapprove.
Obama’s handling of Iraq: 44% approve, 53% disapprove.

Next?

I’m always the last to hear anything!

It wasn’t tax cuts. It wasn’t sitting on our hands and letting the market correct itself. It wasn’t anything that conservatives advocated and are still advocating. It was massive government stimulus spending in the major national economies around the world.

China, for instance, pumped $586 billion into its economy beginning in November 2008.

To say that Obama’s stimulus plan didn’t impact the turnaround even as the the massive stimulus spending of other governments did, is seriously stupid.

You portray yourself as a very studious and deep thinker, but you weasel out on every argument. I never criticized Krugman for anything on that graph, I just said he didn’t draw any conclusions either way about what impact Obama’s economic policies had on global industrial production, as Oliver’s blog post claimed. I didn’t even criticize Oliver for saying what he said, just that Krugman didn’t make that contention. The comment I highligted from Krugman’s blog post made that same point, that the turn in global I-P started 8-9 months ago, before the stimulus or any of Obama’s policies had any effect (save for preventing the banks from failing, if you want to give him credit for that).

I’m interested in the economic policies of countries like India and China noted by the other comment. If, as the commenter says, India and China took far more aggressive approaches to government spending than the US did in response to the crisis, that doesn’t really say much for the conservative line on the stimulus package.

Overall though, the graph suggests we have dodged a bullet at the same time governments around the world started spending more money, not cutting taxes or doing nothing.

Imagine that.

Here, I’ll reprint it for you:

Via Paul Krugman comes this graphic illustrating via global industrial production how the policies of Obama are pulling us out of the economic death spiral that started on Bush’s watch.

Bold is mine, fafaroo, to emphasize what you in your haste to satisfy your transferred obsession, obviously missed.