Yale economics experts: Obama’s jobs plan not aggressive enough

Robert Shiller, the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics at Yale School of Management after whom the S&P’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index is named, said that President Barack Obama’s
job stimulus plan is not sufficient in this time of crisis, and other Yale experts seem to agree.

The proposed stimulus, he said in the video above, does not go far enough.

“I think it was a little weak in terms of the crisis we’re going through. He gave the impression that this act would solve the problems. It would help some people, but it’s pretty limited in the overall impact, I believe, and it’s not really up to the magnitude of the problem. We have 14 million unemployed and there’s a risk that the economy is going to sink into recession, so we’ll have even more unemployed. And there’s a serious risk that this problem is going to continue for years.”

Jacob Hacker, the director of the Institute for Social and Policy Studies, said he is just relieved to be talking about the job market: “At least we’re now having a real discussion about jobs,” he said.

The latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices numbers show that U.S. national home prices are back to 2003 levels, having increased by 3.6 percent in the second quarter of 2011, after falling 4.1 percent in the first quarter of 2011.