In his first news conference, on February 9, Obama stated: "there is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jump start the economy." Here is a link to a "few" economists who do not agree with that statement... http://www.cato.org/special/stimulus09/alternate_version.html
This transcript of the press conference doesn't have that particular quote. What it does have is this: I suppose his use of weak qualifiers like "most" and "almost" are the closest he'll get to admitting that there is significant disagreement with his spend-trillions-and-hope-it-works approach. -=Steve=-
My mistake. The quote was made 1/9/09. I mistook that for his remarks made on 2/9/09 at his first press conference.
I find this argument about the "desperate" need for a stimulus package very similar to the man-made global warming phenomenon. Obama seemed to smirk at the thought that anyone would think that doing nothing was a viable option. He insinuated that every reputable economist believes that the government needs to spend close to a trillion dollars to fix the economy and that simply is not true. In the same respect, the man-made global warming believers have come to criticize and demean anyone that does not whole-heartedly agree that man alone is causing temperatures to rise. There is a large contingent of the scientific community that does not agree, but they are shunned if they do not hold the company line... Groupthink...Very scary times...
Well, I don't know for sure if global warming is man-made or not, but here is what I do know. The government's monetary and fiscal policies distort market signals, which leads to overinvestment in certain sectors of the economy, which in turn requires that the market cleanse itself of all bad market players, and hence the current recession. What the media often calls market failure is in fact a market triumph. You decide whether we need a financial stimulus or not, and whether it should go to the same bad market players.
Speaking of government intrusion and distortion, I just caught up with my 'news and views' and absolutely, positively LOVED Declan McCullagh's article at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/25/politics/otherpeoplesmoney/main4891193.shtml entitled 'Someone stop the "Bailout Party"' As usual, though, the people who most need it are still stuck on stupid with BDS so their only participation in weighy discussions is how quickly they can get a hook to Bush-Cheney-Rove-Halliburton-end-of-discussion-back-to-zombie-mode.