Thursday, January 22, 2009

Obama stimulus expectations- Stem cell research

Almost half of Obama’s proposed $825 billion stimulus package won’t get injected into the economy for at least two years, the Congressional Budget Office forecast today.

In its Economic Outlook, the CBO took a gander at the “discretionary” portion of the proposed stimulus -- spending on infrastructure, renewable energy and other “job creating” initiatives -- and suggested it would be late 2010 before those projects got off the ground.

The CBO report was chock-full of economic forecasts. Here’s the highlight reel:
The U.S. economy will contract in 2009 by 2.2%
GDP will grow again in 2010, but by just 1.5%
Unemployment will peak at 9% in early 2010
Consumer inflation will be a nonissue in 2009, increasing only 0.1% for the whole year
Home prices will fall another 14% between the third quarter of 2008 and the middle of 2010
Government deficit will exceed $1.2 trillion this year, 8.3% of GDP
The American recession will end sometime in the second half of this year.
We’ll be lucky if the U.S. economy turns out as well as the CBO projects.

As President Obama was inaugurated, the White House Web site was being transformed.

In the Agenda section, the new administration set forth a range of ambitious technological goals. Most were stated in general, if not vague, terms. One goal, however, was blunt and straightforward.

“It says, simply, the administration will ‘Advance Stem Cell Research: Support increased stem cell research. Allow greater federal government funding on a wider array of stem cell lines.’

This can be done by executive order, so there is little uncertainty that it will come to pass.”

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