What does a Trillion dollars buy?

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" - Ronald Reagan

For this post, I'll let a picture be the star. What has the one trillion dollar stimulus package achieved?

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

While the news in this graph is very bad for the US and for Obama, I'll switch hats from government cynic to mathematician for a moment.

I've always associated the phrase, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" as a favorite quote of Mark Twain but Wikipedia claims it was first used by British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. While the chart above is accurate, it uses three techniques to exaggerate the message and editorialize.

1. This chart does not prove a "swindle". That's just the artist's opinion. I do agree however with the byline, "Reality Trumps White House Promises".

2. I doubt very much that the Obama's sad face is related to the stimulus. The artist wants us to assume that Obama has acknowledged his "guilt" in the "swindle". To my knowledge Obama is still claiming with a smile that the stimulus is a success.

3. The vertical scale of the chart is approximately 7 to 10.5%. By not starting the vertical scale at zero, differences are exaggerated. The White House predicted 8% but got 10%. This is an actual error of 1/4 or 25%. But the graph shows the red line climbing to 4 times higher than the White House "promise" for a perceived error of 400%.

Now here is a more honest graph of the same numbers.

Bottom Line

I'm now putting my government cynic hat back on...

Recall how this stimulus package was passed in Congress. It was urgent to prevent an economic disaster. There was no time to read the details. We were asked to trust our leaders that they knew best how to solve the crisis by throwing lots of money at it. I hope Americans never make that mistake again.