Channel-surfing we can believe in...

More people watched President Obama's jobs speech Thursday evening than tuned into the NFL's season kickoff game that followed.



Via Balloon Juice

Mark Zandi, founder of Moody's and an '08 advisor to John McCain, does the numbers on the Obama Jobs Act

This is useful analysis, given the "non-partisan," "business elite economist" resume of Moody's Analytics' chief Mark Zandi.

Jared Bernstein has it:

Here’s (Zandi's) projected impact of GDP and jobs:

–President Obama’s jobs proposal would help stabilize confidence and keep the U.S. from sliding back into recession.

–The plan would add 2 percentage points to GDP growth next year, add 1.9 million jobs, and cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point.

Source: Zandi, Moody’s Analytics

The view from a moderately liberal Keynesian economist of good intentions who is filling in for "the Left" on America's bizarre, Tea Party-tilted political spectrum

Paul Krugman, long a leading liberal critic of the President on economic strategy, was both impressed by the jobs plan Obama laid out before Congress and depressed by a toxic political landscape that is likely to kill the legislative proposals:

I was favorably surprised by the new Obama jobs plan, which is significantly bolder and better than I expected. It’s not nearly as bold as the plan I’d want in an ideal world. But if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment.


Of course, it isn’t likely to become law, thanks to G.O.P. opposition. Nor is anything else likely to happen that will do much to help the 14 million Americans out of work. And that is both a tragedy and an outrage...

(I)t’s worth noting just how much that opposition has hardened over time, even as the plight of the unemployed has worsened.