A Second Economic Stimulus Package in the Works? 0 comments

A Second Economic Stimulus Package in the Works?

[link to seekingalpha.com]

President Barack Obama said recently that a second [multi-billion] economic stimulus package isn’t needed yet, though he expects the U.S. economy and unemployment to worsen this year. He also acknowledged that due to worse than expected economic factors, initial forecasts from his administration missed the mark.

The original $787 billion stimulus bill was rushed through Congress and signed in February 2009, with his chief economic advisers forecasting that it would help hold unemployment below 8 percent. It included tax cuts and spending on infrastructure projects that the president pledged would save or create 3.5 million jobs.

Obama defended his initial stimulus projections, saying the economy worsened once the legislation was enacted only weeks into his presidency. “Nobody understood what the depths of this recession were going to look like,” Obama said. “It was only significantly later that we suddenly get a report that the economy had tanked.”

However, the President did acknowledge that he was not satisfied with the progress made around distributing the stimulus funds and that the administration had to do more work with a program to modify existing mortgages, which hasn’t “been keeping pace with all the foreclosures that are taking place.”