Stimulus Reporting: Clouds Amidst a Silver Frame -- I Mean, Lining

Finally, someone's come up with a way to tell the American People about how the amazingly incalculable $787 billion stimulus package is being disbursed. Truth: as a socialist, as an American, I was against it. "Too big to fail" isn't part of the capitalist equation, and helping the poor and starving is infinitely more profitable to society than helping the mega-rich not wear rags. Humility's a good thing, especially for those who've forgotten it.

So the recovery.gov report, complete with impossible errors and gaffs found in any draft report (and I've drafted many of those over the decades) are just symptoms of something else, something wonderful: the ability, the strength, the bravery of an administration to show data, and not just information, about something critical to and criticized by the American public.

Most Americans probably don't listen to the monthly reports from the government on the Beige Report, or GDP listings. They're published one month, then updated and amended over the next few months, reflecting errors, omissions and updates from information not available at report deadline time. Information at www.recovery.gov should be given the same level of (a) initial acceptance and (b) critical regard and auditing. So that the next release of data is more accurate, and reflects the input not just of a cabal of cabinet insiders, but of every citizen economist and kibbitzer in the Unites States.

The Bush/Cheney days of hiding information behind lawyers and layers of bullshit are over. The truth is never instantly accurate, instantly obvious, or even instantly right. But having data and enough background to understand the genesis of errors in the data is infinitely better than not having access to anything but sanitized data. (Remember the USSR and its "data" and five year plans?)

Kudos to the Obama administration for putting its collective glutea maximi on the line, and getting something out to the light of day, flawed and miscalculated as it might be.