A New Great Depression? Maybe Not.

The Obama administration is fond of comparing our current economic crisis to the Great Depression. "We are in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and a lot of you I think are worried about your jobs, your pensions, your retirement accounts," he said.

Talk such as this was used to sell the nation on the now under performing stimulus package. Obama said the stimulus bill had “saved or created over 150,000 jobs.” However, since the $787 billion spending measure passed, over 1 million jobs have been lost and unemployment has increased to 8.9 percent.

And there’s this from an Associated Press study:

Counties suffering the most from job losses stand to receive the least help from President Barack Obama's plan to spend billions of stimulus dollars on roads and bridges, an Associated Press analysis has found.

Although the intent of the money is to put people back to work, AP's review of more than 5,500 planned transportation projects nationwide reveals that states are planning to spend the stimulus in communities where jobless rates are already lower.

So, we were told that the nation was staring a new Great Depression in the face and we needed to implement the biggest spending plan we had ever seen to combat it; and that plan has yet to show any real results. Well, it turns that Great Depression comparison may have been just a bit hyperbolic.

The graph is from the Donald Marron's new blog.

Can you imagine what the nonproductive stimulus plan would have cost if we really were entering a new Great Depression?