The U.S Treasury last Friday put out a press release that proudly proclaimed its latest success in getting stimulus checks out the door. The money quote:
"This week the Treasury Department sent out 6.211 million economic stimulus payments to American households totaling $4.927 billion. So far, Treasury has sent out 51.675 million total economic stimulus payments totaling $45.720 billion."
Question 1: Has anyone noticed any change in consumer behavior since the checks started coming?
Question 2: Isn't the better statistic the number of stimulus checks that have been deposited or cashed rather than just mailed out?
Question 3: Instead of saying "51.675 million" in the release, wouldn't it have been easier to understand if the Treasury said either 51.7 million or 51,675,000?
Food and Gas
What stimulus check?
How Bush Admin measures "success" regarding tax policy
On questions #1 and #2: Stan, you forget that the Bush Administration measures their "success" in tax policy as how much they've given away/back in tax cuts (the cost to the Treasury)--not on how the tax cuts actually change economic behavior.
Sent out, not Mailing Out
Got ours (a few weeks ago) via Direct Deposit; paid down bills (no change from normal).
Others will not have gotten theirs yet, since they won't have mail service until today.
Otherwise, almost What economistmom Said. The current Administration measures its success by how much of those revenues can be skimmed of to friends. Since the checks will be spent on higher gasoline prices, the stimulus is an unadulterated "success."
Here is what I noticed: on
Here is what I noticed: on 4/26 the Treasury had sent out $1.3 billion in rebates and the chain store sales index was 496.3; by 5/24 the rebate total had grown to $46.7 billion and the chain store index had fallen to 488.2.
It is always possible people pay down credit cards immediately then charge back up over the next few months. That remains to be seen.
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