So, how much has all that spending stimulated the economy?

Current Contraction Surpasses "Great Recession" or Is It All Just 'The Big Scoop'?

Rick Davis at the Consumer Metrics Institute emails his latest. Here;s what you should take out of his report:

On October 20, 2010 the aggregate severity of the 2010 contraction in consumer demand surpassed the similar measure of economic pain experienced during the "Great Recession." And a glance at our "Contraction Watch" tells us that the pain is not about to end anytime soon:

In the above chart, the day-by-day courses of the 2008 and 2010 contractions are plotted in a superimposed manner, with the plots aligned on the left margin at the first day during each event that our Daily Growth Index went negative. The plots then progress day-by-day to the right, tracing out the changes in the daily rate of contraction in consumer demand for the two events.

The true severity of any contraction event is the area between the "zero" axis in the above chart and the line being traced out by the daily contraction values. By that measure the "Great Recession of 2008" had a total of 793 percentage-days of contraction over the course of 221 days, whereas the current 2010 contraction has reached 820 percentage-days over the course of 282 days -- without yet clearly forming a bottom.

The damage to the economy is already 3% worse than in 2008, and the 2010 contraction has lasted 28% longer than the entire 2008 event without yet starting to recover...