Oh, something else to be thankful for

From the CBO's estimate of the impact of the stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA) for the third quarter of 2010:

....looking at recorded spending to date along with estimates of the other effects of ARRA on spending and revenues, CBO has estimated the law’s impact on employment and economic output using evidence about the effects of previous similar policies and drawing on various mathematical models that represent the workings of the economy. On that basis, CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the third quarter
of calendar year 2010:

• They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domesticproduct (GDP) by between 1.4 percent and4.1 percent,

• Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.8 percentage points and 2.0 percentage points,

• Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.6 million, and

• Increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 2.0 million to 5.2 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise.

That effect will wane next year. There should have been more. But I'm glad it was there.