De Rugy v Romer, Knockout in Round 1

Guest Post by Jeff Perren

The goddess Veronique de Rugy has an absolutely delicious smackdown of the totally clueless Christine Romer, soon-to-be ex-Obama voodoo priestess.

  And not only did her own reports to Congress confirm these predictions [about the the success of stimulus “relative to what would otherwise have occurred”], but the CBO agreed as well, and apparently, so did “respected private-sector analysts” (meaning Mark Zandy).
    I know, you’ve heard me say it before, but I’ll say it again: A prediction only becomes true when it actually materializes. For instance, if you predict that 3.5 million jobs will be created, it only becomes true once the 3.5 million jobs are created.
    You can’t claim victory if you haven’t gone back and checked that these jobs exist. Nor can you claim victory if the only evidence that these jobs exist comes from models that say that these jobs exist — especially when they are models that have the assumption that the Recovery Act creates jobs built into them....
    She did mention using it to pay down the deficit, but when asked specifically about the deficit, she basically said we should spend more today and take care of the deficit tomorrow. In other words, more of the “eat your dessert now and your spinach later” mentality that got us into this mess in the first place. It’s never worked with my kids, and I am pretty sure it’s not the way to restore fiscal responsibility in Washington.

When Washington starts listening to individuals like Ms. de Rugy and not smiley-faced fascists like Christine Romer, we'll see some genuine fiscal progress there.