Customer Reviews

Economic Report of the President, Transmitted to the Congress February 2010 Together With the Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisors

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Simply put, the annual Economic Report of the President (ERP) should be required reading for every U.S. citizen, every year. The ERP provides a wealth of information and data about the nation's economic activity. This type of information is perhaps no more critical than in times of economic downturn. Want to know more about employment trends? Housing construction? Trends in investment? Perspectives on the stimulus and what it actually did? It's all in here. Don't trust it? Well, fact-check it against analyses from the CBO or GAO, or other impartial sources - but don't just discard it.

But, of course, the ERP is more than just pure economic information. It's also a political document, and often contains the clearest statement of priorities for whichever administration is issuing it outside the State of the Union - and this is important too, regardless of whether or not you agree with the White House's current occupant. Oppose Obama? Read this, grapple with it, and better define for yourself which parts of Obama's agenda you really don't like - or which parts can serve as common ground. Support Obama? Read this and make sure you know what it is you like about his policy preferences - and which parts of his agenda might not jive with your expectations.

I realize it's a long report, and I also realize a lot of this stuff might be difficult reading. I'd just encourage folks to do their best with it.

One of the advantages of living in a liberal market democracy is the availability of information; I think it's important not to under-appreciate this fact. And if you don't make use of the information available to you as a citizen to make informed choices about who to support, you're just not doing your job.

Thank you Amazon for making the Economic Report and the U.S. Budget available free to Kindle users.
These two documents are essential resources for any citizen who wants the facts, not opinions or spins, about our economy and our Federal government.

What a great service. I love having access to a document like this that I likely would never have sought on my own.

With the release of the annual Economic Report of the President, the Obama administration laid out a sweeping economic agenda that includes overhauling health care, restructuring financial regulation and dealing with long-term budget deficits. But the backdrop for all those initiatives is an economy that, if the administration's forecast is correct, will be functioning well below its potential for years to come.

President Obama's first official economic report to Congress predicts lackluster employment growth this year and next, even after including the impact of a jobs bill whose prospects appeared uncertain in the Senate.

The report predicts the U.S. unemployment rate would average 10% for this year, would drop to 8.2% by 2012, and remain at levels higher than 6% until 2015.
The report also say the U.S. gross domestic product would increase by 3% in 2010, then rise to 4.3% in both 2011 and 2012 before slipping slightly to 4.2% in 2013 and dropping down to 3.4% by 2015.

The Economic Report of the President should be a must read read for every educated U.S. citizen, every year. The report provides a wealth of information about our nation's economic activity.

I have the Amazon Kindle app on my phone, where I peruse the economic and historical literature of the day (and yesterdays for the historical stuff?). On occasion, I am forced by my extreme social anxiety into reading a book on a 24-second elevator ride - this is that book.

I will gain two pages in this book after like a week of work. It's insane how slowly I read it. I like to think that I'm REALLY absorbing it, unlike those professional economists who just read it in two days.

The subject matter is not only incredibly dry, it's incredibly dry by economics standards. I guess it's actually less dry by normal standards for that reason, but in economic literature there at least is this sort of pretense (and maybe I'm going on a limb here, especially in macroeconomic matters) that the writer is being fair. He/She (McCloskey?) at least pretends to be fair, and pays lip service to other schools of thought.

But not this beautiful little piece of propaganda.

When I'm reading it, I literally hear it in Barrack Obama's voice (best feature?) and I'm beginning to think he actually wrote it. It sounds so, so much like a 17 hour campaign speech from hell. Heavy on the theory, with retreats to empiricism whenever convenient - yeah, you know the type.

It's free, so download it and enjoy it. It's not like it matters if you lose your place - every two paragraphs is like its own little thesis for you to enjoy. Don't take it to seriously (obviously), but if you need something to help escape the wandering eyes of your elevator-mates who oh-my-god-is-that-lady-actually-going-to-say-something-to-me-why-are-they-harassing-me won't leave you alone, it will get the job done.

Contains a lot the typical B/S you would expect in politics. Lots of contradictive wants and needs, (such as, the 3 year freeze on spending while increasing citizen benefit spending.) Gives a better insight to the president's plans, better than any news source will (ie MSNBC or Fox News.) A must read for any American who actually cares about what is going on with our nation. Just be prepared, as with any politics, to use your brain shovel because the b/s is waste deep.

It's a very long read and extremely well documented, BUT as I was reading the 10 chapters I kept thinking of a college course I took in 1977 entitled "How to Lie with Statistics". The authors of this document could have written this college course as well. Just because it reads as believable doesn't make it so. The majority of the proposals will accelerate the budget deficits, not control them. The cap and trade proposals with their foundation in the need to control CO2 emissions is particularly troubling as are the health care proposals. The other chapters are full of more Big Government controlling more and more of our lives. No Thanks.