Feature Story

October 30, 2009

Recovery Act spurs genuine growth

From Economic Policy Institute:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act can’t seem to catch a break. When the economy contracted at a 0.7% rate in the quarter after it was first enacted, critics argued that the contraction was evidence that the recovery act didn’t (or even couldn’t) have any effect at all. Never mind that there was wide agreement among economists that, without it the contraction would’ve been three or four times worse.

Now that it has been reported that the economy expanded at a 3.5% rate in the third quarter of this year, some experts quoted by CNN and the New York Times (among others) are suggesting that precisely because the recovery act was responsible for the lion’s share of growth, it somehow had failed to repair the economy’s deep (usually unspecified) underlying structural problems. In short, the recovery-package-led growth in the third quarter was somehow “artificial.”

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