Question of the day

How do we know stimulus is working?

Because we’ve got the signs to prove it.

You start putting up enough of these babies alongside the highways of America, you just might start distracting people from the fact that for Brazil, India, China, much of continental Europe and even that basket case, Japan, the recession has ended.

Us? Thanks, no – we’re rather enjoying our economy that shrank by 1 percent in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, we we’re checking out some stimulus projects here in San Diego County on Onvia’s excellent site here and two trends emerged. First, knowing this is a navy town, it would come as no surprise that many of the stimulus projects would be going to Navy and Marine Corps installations but we were a little taken aback that it is virtually all the stimulus projects slated for San Diego County going to such items as installing photovoltaic cells on the rooftops of various Navy/Marine Corps-occupied buildings.

And this begs the question, how many of these projects were funded already out of NAVFAC’s (people responsible for maintenance and upkeep of DON facilities) budget? We would imagine, quite a few of them. If anyone has any insight to this, do share.

Secondly, check out the delta between the CBO’s and the White House’s estimate for the number of jobs that will be funded by each project. In virtually every case, the CBO estimates about 50-60% of the White House’s far more optimistic prognostication.

But let's not linger upon these finer details for too long when we've got more signs to build.