I’m not sure what the bigger story is here, the fact that cash for clunkers was a bunch of waste that will likely hurt the auto industry in the long run, or the fact that the White House now wants to get into a blog war with another media source. This administration is turning into a huge joke rather quickly.
There may be a time and a place to respond to critics, but being whiny and childish is not the way. How disgraceful. How pathetic
C fof C just does not pass the common sense test.
Hey, we’re going to create debt so you can buy a foreign made car…
WOW, great idea!
But the Whitehouse response is really the story. Did Bush ever do anything like this? And can you imagine if he had?
Wow, $24k per vehicle sold, what a cluster fuck.
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Wow, $24k per vehicle sold, what a cluster fuck.[/quote]
Wait till you see the money they save with health care!
Well, it did give the economy a boost. No credible economist would argue against its effectiveness. Are the White House’s estimates of its effectiveness too rosy? Probably. But if they hadn’t done it, and GDP that quarter was ~1.5% lower, you’d be complaining about that, too.
And btw, whatever happened to the brilliant Cash for Refrigerators?
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Well, it did give the economy a boost. No credible economist would argue against its effectiveness. [/quote]
Nope - the White House “analysis” doesn’t adequately account for ordinary demand for auto sales or the effect of “recession buying”, where consumers who played it safe during the go-go years take advantage of the great deals (cheap financing, lowered prices, etc.) when times are bad. These phenomena occur whether Cash for Clunkers was rolled out or not, so it is incorrect to attribute the whole of auto sales to this program. And any “credible economist” would know that as a preliminary matter.
You simply have no idea what you are talking about, do you?
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Well, it did give the economy a boost. No credible economist would argue against its effectiveness. Are the White House’s estimates of its effectiveness too rosy? Probably. But if they hadn’t done it, and GDP that quarter was ~1.5% lower, you’d be complaining about that, too.[/quote]
The benefits are overstated. GM and Chrysler didn’t benefit from the program because they stopped producing the types of cars that qualified for the program during their shutdown. Ford is the only domestic manufacturer that benefitted, the rest of the money went to foreign manufacturers who took the money overseas.
A lot of the cars that were taken off of the road and crushed were American made cars that required American made repair parts when something broke. So that wasn’t good for the American auto parts industry.
Replacing a bunch of old cars with new cars doesn’t help the repair inudstry. It takes energy to produce new cars, so the energy savings is less than they make out.
Hmm, I wonder if the Obama Administration is going after media criticism of the numbers for the “stimulus” ?
Surprise, surprise!
From ABC News: ( http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/10/160000-per-stimulus-job-white-house-calls-that-calculator-abuse.html )
Posting its results late this afternoon at Recovery.gov, the White House claimed 640,329 jobs have been created or saved because of the $159 billion in stimulus funds allocated as of Sept. 30.
Officials acknowledged the numbers were not exact, saying that states and localities that reported the numbers have made mistakes.
…
White House officials heralded the unparalleled transparency in reporting job numbers to the public, but acknowledged there is no consistent standard across states or localities, or among federal agencies giving out stimulus funds, in differentiating between a “saved” job and a “created” job.
The White House argues that the actual job number is actually larger than 640,000 – closer to 1 million jobs when one factors in stimulus jobs added in October and, more importantly, jobs created indirectly, such as “the waitress who’s still on the job,” Vice President Biden said today.
So let’s see. Assuming their number is right – 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?
Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that “calculator abuse.”
Recession-buying? How stupid are you? Demand for durables ALWAYS falls during a recession. This is a well-documented phenomenon in the auto-industry. Demand reliably falls during the recession, and pent-up demand drives a sharp increase during the recovery.
So wait, when consumer spending is down dramatically, and the credit markets are glacial, you want me to believe that a bunch of people all of a sudden went out and bought an expensive item that you usually need some credit for? That in the midst of the biggest recession since WWII, we abruptly set a bunch of sales records for new cars, which then sharply dropped off for…what reason? Are you just having fun with me, or are you really this delusional?
I’ve got to admit, I don’t know how things work in your universe.
Of course they were overstated. It’s politics. You’ll notice I said that earlier. But, inconveniently for your argument, it was the first time GDP actually grew in over a year.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Demand for durables ALWAYS falls during a recession. This is a well-documented phenomenon in the auto-industry.[/quote]
Who said it didn’t?
Uh yeah, and “recession buying” is a part of that rising demand. Not all consumers are the same, and “recession buying” on big ticket items is nothing new after an economy has been in a recession for a while and great deals to move inventory begin to emerge.
You can get credit if you are qualified, Sherlock - I don’t know a single person in my neighborhood that has not refinanced their home. Moreover, many places are extending zero interest financing - they are to just have you be a receivable on a glorified layaway plan if they can just move some inventory.
Let me guess - consumer credit is just one more thing you don’t know about and have no experience with?
Of course you don’t - you are a student with an ATM machine attached to your parents’ pocketbook. enjoying the dividends of someone else’s hard work - how could you possibly know what happens in my universe?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Demand for durables ALWAYS falls during a recession. This is a well-documented phenomenon in the auto-industry.
Who said it didn’t?[/quote]
Um, YOU DID. You said “the White House “analysis” doesn’t adequately account for ordinary demand for auto sales or the effect of “recession buying”, where consumers who played it safe during the go-go years take advantage of the great deals (cheap financing, lowered prices, etc.) when times are bad.” So unless I’m misreading that, you seem to think that the increase in sales was not primarily due to the program, but rather recession buying. Which means that demand for durables went up (not only that, it shot up during the program, and the fell off again; interesting).
Yeah, the great deal was the Cash for Clunkers program. Besides that, we’re still in a recession. Where’s the car buying? There are still deals. You’re incoherent.
Oh, good thing your neighborhood constitutes the entire country.
Good idea: try some personal insults to mask your idiocy. It’s a better strategy than trying to debate.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Nonsense upon stilts
…Replacing a bunch of old cars with new cars doesn’t help the repair inudstry. It takes energy to produce new cars, so the energy savings is less than they make out.
[/quote]
It’s an example of the ‘Broken Window Fallacy’
See: Parable of the broken window - Wikipedia
Come on what does Edmunds know about the car business…compared to a Harvard lawyer who was community organizer.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Well, it did give the economy a boost. No credible economist would argue against its effectiveness. Are the White House’s estimates of its effectiveness too rosy? Probably. But if they hadn’t done it, and GDP that quarter was ~1.5% lower, you’d be complaining about that, too.[/quote]
It created a bubble…Bubbles burst. In the end it hurt more than it helped. It created a surge followed by a lull. In the end it averages out to what it would have been before, if not worse.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Well, it did give the economy a boost. No credible economist would argue against its effectiveness. Are the White House’s estimates of its effectiveness too rosy? Probably. But if they hadn’t done it, and GDP that quarter was ~1.5% lower, you’d be complaining about that, too.[/quote]
There are “credible economists” that fall for the broken window fallacy?
Pray tell!
From what I heard, most car dealers just raised the price on the cars by $3500-$4500, so really what benefit was it to use the program?
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Well, it did give the economy a boost. No credible economist would argue against its effectiveness. Are the White House’s estimates of its effectiveness too rosy? Probably. But if they hadn’t done it, and GDP that quarter was ~1.5% lower, you’d be complaining about that, too.[/quote]
Here we go with more stupidity. C for C did 4 things. 1) It moved auto sales that would have occured in the 4th quarter up to the 3rd quarter. 2) It encouraged a few people to take on more debt by buying a new car (one of the worlds worst investments) rather than a used car. 3) It pissed away $3 billion 4) it destroyed ~700,000 used cars that could still be providing transportation to someone who needs it.