The government spent a dollar, and GDP went up about a dollar. That makes sense to me, since government spending is one of the terms in the definition of GDP.

When the stimulus was being sold back in January, we were told that the multiplier should be 1.3 in the third quarter (rising eventually to 1.5 — see Greg Mankiw’s blog for discussion and pointers to the Romer/Bernstein PDF).

I agree that Romney is wrong when he says “the stimulus didn’t work.”

However, it seems to me it would be reasonalbe to say “the stimulus didn’t work as well as we were promised.”

Borrowers are hurt by deflation because they repay debt with stronger dollars. The reverse is true for lenders; they benefit like cash owners–if they get their money back.

Once again, if you own cash deflation is your best friend.

I spent several years playing in a very popular free drop-in game in Vancouver. There were regularly more people than could practically be used as skaters and less than we needed to be goalies.

This often meant that if you wanted ice time you had to cobble together enough equipment that you were willing to risk the hygiene of from other people, and have the balls to stand in net and let people hit a frozen disc of rubber at you at close to a hundred miles an hour.

The best goalie amongst us, Jaimie, HATED playing goal, because despite his skill he was not bat-s**t crazy.
I played goal often due to a certain fearlessness that other players hated when I skated, but appreciated when I was in goal… ’cause then they could ‘balance the books’ with me with impunity. I just wanted to be in the game, and would take the ice time any way I could get it… even though I was notoriously bad at stopping pucks.

So yes – you need to be out of your skull to play goal. As a result, it becomes a supply and demand issue. And if you had a choice between losing every game with me in goal, or paying for Jaimie’s beer after the game to convince him to step into the paint and give your team a chance to actually win; then you bought Jaimie’s beer.