Carolyn Lochhead in today's SF Comical wants to inform us that the stimulus is taking too long. Not that anyone told us it would be quicker:

None of this should be a surprise. Only a small fraction of the stimulus has even been spent, so it is not shocking that it has yet to show results. By the end of this year, less than a quarter of the money will be out the door. As was widely noted in February, the bulk of the $787 billion will arrive next year.

Nor, really, is there a way to get the money into the economy more quickly because direct transfers and tax cuts are not being spent:

The fast-acting part of the stimulus has been small transfers to individuals who have put the money into savings or paid down debt. These include Obama's "Making Work Pay" tax cut, a few dollars a week for most workers, $250 checks to Social Security retirees and a $25-a-week boost in unemployment benefits.

States are using a great part of the stimulus money to plug the yawning gaps in their budgets:

Like most states, California has used its money to patch the yawning holes in its own budget, whose deficit for the new fiscal year stands at $26.3 billion.

Most of the money that has arrived has gone to Medi-Cal - the health care program for the poor - food stamps, unemployment benefits, tuition awards and Social Security and retired veterans' benefits. Aid to the University of California and California State University systems has forestalled big hikes in tuition.

I's a bad idea, according to the only economic expert that Lochhead could find in the entire San Francisco Bay Area:

If most of the money will be spent next year, "then it's certainly not a stimulus as anybody who thinks of these things would have wanted it to be," said former Bush administration economic adviser Edward Lazear of the Hoover Institution. "There's no question the economy is in trouble. If you believe in stimulus working at all, this is when you would do it."

Now there are a great many of us, who do not depend solely on the SF Comical for our news and ideas, who could have told you all of this in January:

Fiscal Policy is slow. Direct spending on projects requires approval from the legislature which can take months. It also requires projects which need to be planned and put into motion. When jobs are created it takes some time for the spending of the people who have jobs to pass through the economy. This is why the stimulus should have been under consideration last fall when the financial meltdown started. If we has started the process in November we would be feeling the results now.

This would, of course, have required that the free market types of the Bush Administration, people like Mr. Lazear, admit that there was an economic emergency that could not be cured by bailing out the banks and letting market magic do its stuff. It would also have required that the Republicans in the House and the Senate support two massive spending packages to fix the mess that they had created.

Tax cuts push money into the economy quickly but have limited effectiveness. Remember that we had a tax cut designed to stimulate the economy in early 2008. Remember that the impact of this stimulus was quick. Remember that it also vanished before the year was up. Tax cuts are the economic equivalent of doing a few lines of cocaine. Lochhead herself noted this back in February:

The problem with tax cuts when consumer and business confidence is so low, however, is that households save most of the money, said Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan administration Treasury official. Past tax rebates, including the up to $600 checks sent out last year by the Bush administration, were mostly saved or used to pay down debt, affirming the theory of the late conservative economist Milton Friedman, who first pointed out that people do not alter their spending permanently in response to temporary changes in their income.

Greater relief for state budgets was proposed as a part of the original stimulus. Funds to states were cut to secure the support of "moderate" Democrats and two Republicans. These folks didn't want to see their valuable Midwestern tax dollars go to bail out the wastrels of California. Many in the media thought that this was a shining example of conservatives moderating out of control spending.

Finally, the stimulus was too small to begin with. For this information, this view of the economy, Ms Lochhead need only to read Paul Krugman's columns and blog at the New York Times on line.

I believe that Ms Lochhead really needs to expand her sources for economic policy analysis beyond the Hoover Institute. Ms. Lochhead really needs to get out more. A mere half hour's drive across the Bay Bridge will take her to Berkeley California where she can find Brad DeLong holding office hours in Evans Hall. I have even heard that he is sometimes lonely and offers snacks to bring in students and others.

After her visit she could check out some fine shops down in West Berkeley right near the University on ramp and enjoy some seafood at Spengers.

Or, if she really does not have the time, she can have her intern get on the new fangled interweb and print up the relevant postings from Brad DeLong's excellent blog thingie called Grasping Reality With Both Hands.