Missing the Point

Bruce Bartlett says we don't need a second stimulus since the first hasn't affect the economy yet.

Paul Krugman says the stimulus has kept unemployment from being worse than it would have been, but we need more stimulus because the stimulus was never big enough to repair the economy.

Megan McArdle bats her eyelashes and says that Krugman is much smarter than she, but he is wrong, and the stimulus is a failure because unemployment is still rising.

It's like a game of telephone. The story becomes hopelessly muddled when McArdle gets her grimy fingers on it, and she ends up responding to the misinterpretation rattling around in her head instead of the real issue.