Grrr.... Thorstein Veblen is dismayed...

This time, by Harvard's Dani Rodrik.

Dani quotes a former student (now at the ILO) on stimulus sizes from around the globe. The US stimulus is listed as "5.5% of GDP"! If only that were so...

So Thorstein wrote:

The US stimulus is nowhere close to 5.5% of GDP... That's off by nearly an order of magnitude... The stimulus is over three years, not one -- that makes it 1.8%. Secondly, half of it is just plugging the state and local budget shortfalls, so the net size of the US stimulus is perhaps 1% of GDP at best...

Dani, you've got to start butting back on this wingnut stuff a little harder...