Obama's Stimulus
After nearly all the stimulus money has been spent, the Congressional Budget Office now admits it cost more than advertised, did less to boost growth and will hurt the economy in the long run.
President Obama told corporate leaders Wednesday he was embarrassed by U.S. infrastructure that was "falling behind" countries like China who spent aggressively on construction projects. 
Despite assurances from politicians and most economists of Keynesian persuasion, not only did the biggest and most rapid increase in our federal debt burden since WW II fail to boost the economy, it coincided with the weakest recovery in history—growth of only 2.2% per year on average. -Scott Grannis
(Aug 2014): The past six years in effect have been a laboratory experiment to determine whether Keynesian economic theory is valid. The result? Keynesian economic theory is (or should be) officially dead. It doesn’t work. Government can’t boost the economy by borrowing or spending more money. -Scott Grannis
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Financial, Oops
A Michigan maker of vans for the disabled that received a $50-million Energy Department loan has quietly ceased operation and laid off its staff. Vehicle Production Group, or VPG, stopped operations after finances dipped below the minimum threshold required by the government as a condition of the loan, says its former CEO, John Walsh.
Government, Incompetence, Sex, Financial, Waste, Debt, Jobs
The details of a stimulus grant awarded to Indiana University to study condom use have now been released on a government website. The study, titled "Barriers to Correct Condom Use," is now completed, according to the website, and the university received $423,500 of stimulus funds to perform the study.
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Fraud, Waste, Debt
An Inspector General’s report from the Department of Energy (DOE) recently revealed that the LG Chem auto battery plant in Holland, Michigan “inappropriately claimed and was reimbursed for labor costs that did not support the purpose/objective” of a government grant. According to the IG’s office, this included the costs for staffers to perform “volunteer activities, play games and watch movies during regular work hours.” The IG points the finger at LG Chem and DOE, saying Department officials did not establish appropriate oversight protections into the $142 million grant that was awarded to LG Chem to build the Holland plant.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Economy, Debt, Jobs
On February 17, 2009, in remarks at the signing the $787 billion Stimulus bill, Pres. Obama promised it would lift two million people out of poverty. However, according to the latest available Census Bureau data, quite the opposite occurred. In fact, there are now 2.6 million more people living below poverty.
President Barack Obama’s stimulus put taxpayers on the hook for $30 billion in electronic medical records, many of which have turned out to be technological disasters. But don’t expect to hear about the problems from doctors or hospitals. Most of them are under gag orders not to discuss the specific failings of their systems — even though poor technology in hospitals can have lethal consequences. -Darius Tahir, Politico
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Energy
Battery maker A123 Systems vowed thousands of new jobs when it received a nearly quarter-billion-dollar stimulus grant in late 2009, but federal job-tracking figures show only a few hundred positions were created before the company joined a growing list of federally backed energy businesses that ended in bankruptcy.
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Waste, Jobs
President Obama’s green jobs training program, which was part of his stimulus, has failed on most key jobs measures, according to a new internal audit that found it was training workers who already had jobs that didn’t need green energy skills, and was failing to place new enrollees in jobs once they finished the training... Only 38 percent of those who have completed training got jobs based on it, and only 16 percent kept jobs for at least six months — the key measure of success for the program. “Outcomes for participants were far less than originally proposed,” the auditors said.
Democrat, Liberal, Crime, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Waste
The government’s chief spending watchdogs have already secured nearly 600 convictions and judgments against people and companies accused of misusing stimulus funds and have a whopping 1,900 investigations currently open into possible wrongdoing, officials say.
Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Oops, Energy
With unemployment peaking above 20 percent, Elkhart, Indiana was at the white-hot center of the economic meltdown, and a natural launch point for President Obama's electric vehicle initiative. "So that's why I'm here today," the president said three years ago. "To announce $2.4 billion in highly competitive grants." Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels was also on board in convincing Norwegian company Think Global to open a plant in Elkhart to build Think City electric cars with a sticker price of about $42,000. As incentive, the federal government offered Think City $17 million in stimulus tax credits. But it turns out the company had a checkered track record, including three previous bankruptcies. We recently visited Think City's Indiana plant, and here's what we found: a largely empty warehouse. Everybody hoped that by this time there would be more than 400 workers inside a bustling plant. Instead, today, there are just two workers at Think City.
President Obama on Wednesday defended his 2009 stimulus package and unveiled a new initiative that would provide grants for repairing the nation's infrastructure... The president said the stimulus had “actually worked, despite what everybody claimed”.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Economy
WASHINGTON (AP) — The recession that ended three years ago this summer has been followed by the feeblest economic recovery since the Great Depression. Since World War II, 10 U.S. recessions have been followed by a recovery that lasted at least three years. An Associated Press analysis shows that by just about any measure, the one that began in June 2009 is the weakest. The ugliness goes well beyond unemployment, which at 8.3 percent is the highest this long after a recession ended. Economic growth has never been weaker in a postwar recovery. Consumer spending has never been so slack. Only once has job growth been slower.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Economy
Aug 2012: Back in February 2009, the Obama Administration promised the American public that after their nearly trillion dollar stimulus too effect, the unemployment rate would drop down to 5.3% at the end of his first term. Today it’s at 8.3%.
Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Energy, Economy
Obama spent $90 billion of his stimulus package on green energy projects, including weatherization of buildings and development of electric vehicles. Yet, by the end of last year, just 16,100 people landed new jobs in the so-called green industry, Labor Department statistics show, far short of the 200,000 jobs the White House projected it would help create each year. The lack of progress has some Democrats bemoaning the current state of green energy, particularly when compared with the vision laid out by Obama. "To me, the most glaring failure of the Obama administration has been a total inability to deliver on green jobs," said one top Democratic strategist not associated with the president's re-election campaign.
Democrat, Liberal, Election, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Waste
The states hardest hit by the recession received the least money. States with higher bankruptcy, foreclosure, and unemployment rates got less money. And higher-income states received more. Obama may have claimed that he was motivated to help out those in the toughest shape, but it looks more likely that Democrats were more interested in helping their supporters.
The nearly $3 billion “Cash for Clunkers” program approved by Congress in 2009 did little to boost the environment and created few jobs, a new study released Wednesday found. A Brookings Institution study found the $2.85 billion program “provided a short-term boost in vehicle sales, which were pulled forward from sales that would have occurred in subsequent months.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Economy, Debt
Michigan once had the worst unemployment rate in the U.S. So when stimulus tax dollars poured into the state's electric car industry, residents had reason to celebrate. But what happened next has angered some of President Obama's most ardent supporters. But as it turns out the companies getting all those American tax dollars are largely owned by Koreans. They bought a lot of Korean equipment and supplies. And they filled some of those sought-after jobs with Korean workers. That drew anger from local labor unions. They say pictures, taken inside the plants show Korean nationals doing hands-on work that should be done by Americans.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Energy
A former top economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden admitted that the clean energy firms that have received billions of stimulus dollars will not create many long term jobs. “I was very active in the implementation of the Recovery Act, and one thing we found about clean energy was that if you build a solar plant, you’re going to hire a lot of people,” Jared Bernstein told the American Action Forum. “If you run a solar plant, it doesn’t take a ton of people to run some of these plants. … So, some of these firms don’t employ as many people as you might hope.” Clean energy firms employ 4,700 people nationwide, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Democrat, Liberal, Crime, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Fraud, Waste
But federal investigators have uncovered widespread financial management problems with many of the projects. As of early March, federal authorities were investigating 66 cases of alleged false statements, bid rigging, fraud and embezzlement, according to a report by Calvin L. Scovel III, the Department of Transportation’s inspector general. Justice Department lawyers are scouring 47 of those cases for potential prosecution, according to Scovel.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial
A company given $126.2 million in stimulus taxpayer funds from the U. S. Department of Energy is under investigation for insider trading according to a federal subpoena obtained by CBS News. The company, San Francisco-based Ecotality, makes and installs chargers for electric cars.
Evidence of the astonishing incompetence of the Obama administration continues to roll in. It started with the stimulus package. One-third of the money went to public employee union members — a political payoff not very stimulating to anyone else. Billions went to green energy loans, like the $500 million that the government lost in backing the obviously hapless Solyndra. Infrastructure projects, which the president continues to tout, never seem to get built. -IBD Editorial
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Energy
In the nine months since David Prystash was named Chief Financial Officer of A123 Systems — the battery manufacturer that received $390.1 million in federal and state subsidies — the company has laid off 125 employees and had a net loss of $172 million through the first three quarters of 2011.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Economy
Obama's economists had initially predicted that with the stimulus, unemployment would stay below 8%. Number of long-term unemployed: The number of workers who have been unable to find a job in 27 months or more has shot up 83%, with their ranks now at 5.5 million. Civilian labor force: It has shrunk by 126,000. In past recoveries, the labor force climbed an average of more than 3 million over comparable time periods.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Economy
The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday downgraded its estimate of the benefits of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, saying it may have sustained as few as 700,000 jobs at its peak last year and that over the long run it will actually be a net drag on the economy. CBO said that while the Recovery Act boosted the economy in the short run, the extra debt that the stimulus piled up “crowds out” private investment and “will reduce output slightly in the long run - by between 0 and 0.2 percent after 2016.”
Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Energy, Economy, Regulation
“This was an unexpected outcome and is most unfortunate,” Solyndra chief executive Brian Harrison said in a statement. “Regulatory and policy uncertainties” made it impossible to raise capital to quickly rescue the operation, he said.
Even though 64 percent of Chattanooga respondents said they would rather you hadn’t chosen to visit our fair city, according to a survey on the Times Free Press website, it’s probably good that you’re here. It will give you an opportunity to see the failure of your most comprehensive jobs plan to date, the disastrous stimulus scheme, up close and personal... You claimed that the Smart Grid would create jobs for Chattanooga. But in reality, all it did was push America deeper in debt and lure a local government agency into making a terrible financial decision that will weigh on Chattanoogans like a millstone for decades to come. -The Free Press
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Economy
A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show.
Incompetence, Obama, Brilliance, Oops, Economy
WASHINGTON -- At least $7 million in federal stimulus money intended to provide jobs to unemployed Oregonians instead paid wages to 254 foreign workers, federal investigators have concluded.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Energy, Economy, Jobs
A $500 million green jobs program at the Department of Labor has so far provided only 15 percent of current participants with jobs, leading the agency's inspector general to recommend that the bulk of the money be returned to the Treasury. According to the Labor IG report, as of June 30, grantees had placed 8,035 participants into jobs, or 10 percent of the program's target. Long-term unemployment numbers are worse, with 1,336 participants finding jobs for six months or longer. That's 2.5 percent of current participants, and 2 percent of the program's final target of 69,717.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Economy
Data released by the Census Bureau today showed the proportion of people living in poverty climbed to 15.1 percent last year from 14.3 percent in 2009, and median household income declined 2.3 percent. The number of Americans living in poverty was the highest in the 52 years since the U.S. Census Bureau began gathering that statistic. Those figures may have worsened in recent months as the economy weakened.
Obama has been promising green jobs for years, and failing to deliver them for just as long. There’s little evidence that more environmentally friendly energy sources will be net job creators. The middle class may enjoy bluer skies if we convert more of our power generation capacity to wind and solar. But we’ve no reason to think that they’ll enjoy more green in their wallets. -Megan McArdle
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Economy
WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poor swelled to almost 1 in 6 people last year, reaching a new high as long-term unemployment left millions of Americans struggling and out of work. The number of uninsured edged up to 49.9 million, the biggest in more than two decades.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Economy, Jobs
Unemployment peaked at 10.2 percent in October 2009, an amount significantly higher than the administration’s warning for what unemployment would be without the stimulus (8.8 percent).
Democrat, Liberal, Crime, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Energy
FBI agents armed with search warrants descended this morning on bankrupt solar company Solynrda this morning. The investigation comes after a request by the Department of Energy's inspector general, FBI spokesman Peter Lee told NBC Bay Area News. Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last week, shocking both workers and the Obama administration, which had given the startup hundreds of millions of dollars in low interest loans. Congress has demanded a hearing into the matter.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Economy
The U.S. economy grew much slower than previously thought in the second quarter as business inventories and exports were less robust, a government report showed on Friday.
During last week’s celebration of Richard Cordray’s confirmation as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, President Obama said, “The financial sector was able to make huge bets with other people’s money. And that strain of irresponsibility eventually came crashing down on all of us.”
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Energy, Regulation, Jobs
In 2009, Obama dedicated $7.2 billion of stimulus funds to build "clean tech" jobs. He vowed to create 5 million jobs over the next decade. So far, that effort has "created or retained" just 7,140 jobs, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That's about $1 million per job. The number is actually down from last year, when the EPA claimed 16,605 green jobs.
Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Energy, Economy
Solyndra was touted by the Obama administration as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs. The President visited the facility in May of last year and said "it is just a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism and the fact that we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best technology in the world, and most importantly the best workers in the world. And you guys all represent that. " I was told by a security guard to get my [stuff] and leave," one employee said. The company employs a little more than 1,000 employees worldwide, according to its website.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Waste, Jobs
A green jobs program in one of America's greenest cities is being called a bust 16 months after a $20 million federal grant to weatherize homes in Seattle ended up putting just 14 people to work in mostly administrative jobs and upgrading only three homes in the area.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Economy
Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development. The weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry. Even after that issue was resolved, the program never really caught on.
Remember when the Obama Administration paid gay men $400,000 to cruise the Argentinian bars to discover why gay men engage in risky behavior while drunk? Well they did, and the fun didn’t end there, apparently. More recently, the brave researchers at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute (where else?) obtained half a million dollars in federal stimulus money to ponder the ramifications of – oh, how can I say this – man parts that don’t respond well to faulty condom application skills. -Emily Schrader
Environmentalist, Government, Incompetence, Obama
HOPEWELL JUNCTION — SpectraWatt, the solar-cell manufacturer that began operating here in early 2010 to great acclaim, only to close a year later, has filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy code.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama
A federal stimulus grant of nearly $500,000 to grow trees and stimulate the economy in Nevada yielded a whopping 1.72 jobs, according to government statistics. In 2009, the U.S. Forest Service awarded $490,000 of stimulus money to Nevada's Clark County Urban Forestry Revitalization Project, aimed at revitalizing urban neighborhoods in the county with trees, plants, and green-industry training.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Economy
Although more young people found jobs between April and July, the percentage of young people employed in July 2011 was the lowest July rate on record since the government started tracking the numbers in 1948.
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama
President Barack Obama on Thursday toured a vehicle battery plant in Michigan, touting his administration’s focus on green technology and jobs, at a corporation where federal money authorized by the economic stimulus law that Obama signed at the beginning of his presidency had created "green" jobs at a cost of about $2 million in federal subsidies per job.
Feb 2013: "And I don't think you'd be turning off people in America because they know that America is one big pothole right now," LaHood continued.
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama
Some top Congressional Democrats are losing faith in President Obama's signature employment initiative, the promotion of so-called "green jobs." They've lost so much faith that on Thursday one liberal Democratic member of Congress called the president's green jobs program "a lot of talk."
Editorial, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops
The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Economy
The Federal Reserve's massive stimulus program had little impact on the U.S. economy besides weakening the dollar and helping U.S. exports, Federal Reserve Governor Alan Greenspan told CNBC Thursday.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Tax
WASHINGTON -- Just a few months after lawmakers scolded auto executives for flying to Washington in private jets, Congress approved a tax break in the stimulus package to help businesses buy their own planes. The incentive -- first used to help plane makers recover from the 2001 terror attacks -- sharply reduces the up front tax bill for companies who buy assets like business planes.
Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately? In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending that had by then gone out the door, only one job had been created or saved. Even in Washington, that’s not considered good bang for the buck. Moreover, that was the fifth consecutive “stimulus” report that showed this number getting progressively worse. -Jeffrey H. Anderson, The Weekly Standard
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops
A new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finds that President Obama’s economic stimulus program helped nearly double U.S. debt. The 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook, released Wednesday morning, reports that the “the combination of automatic budgetary responses” and Obama’s stimulus “had a profound impact on the federal budget.”
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Narrative, Oops, Economy
Grpah shows that the US economy stabilized before the stimulus funds were spent.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Economy
As congressional budgeters warn of a debt crisis in the coming years, a new poll shows that 44 percent of Americans say they believe they are worse off under President Obama than in early 2009, when the economy was still technically in recession.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Narrative, Oops, Economy
Twenty-eight months after Congress passed President Obama’s signature economic stimulus law, and nearly one year after he declared the summer of 2010 to be “Recovery Summer,” 1.9 million fewer people are employed.
If there was any debate whether the Fed's policies have helped the economy or just the market (and specifically the Bernanke-targeted Russell 2000), the following two charts will end any and all debate. As the following chart from the St Louis Fed shows, as of the just completed quarter, US GDP "growth" since the "recovery" is now the worst in US history, having just dipped below the heretofore lowest on record. -Tyler Durden
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Oops
Back in January 2009, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein produced a report estimating future unemployment rates with and without a stimulus plan. Their estimates, which were widely circulated, projected that unemployment would approach 9% without a stimulus, but would never exceed 8% with the plan.
Democrat, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Economy
About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months - a higher percentage than during the Great Depression. QLpyTBOck0MT2
Incompetence, Obama, Economy
Pointing to the dramatic turnaround in the Citigroup "Economic Surprise Index" for the United States, Riddell said the tumble in a matter of months to negative from positive is almost as bad as the situation before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
JAY LENO: Economists say rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy will give the ailing construction industry a huge boost. In fact, the storm has already created more jobs than President Obama has.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Economy
The ailing US housing market passed a grim milestone in the first quarter of this year, posting a further deterioration that means the fall in house prices is now greater than that suffered during the Great Depression. The brief recovery in prices in 2009, spurred by government aid to first-time buyers, has now been entirely snuffed out, and the average American home now costs 33 per cent less than it did at the peak of the housing bubble in 2007.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Degeneracy, Financial, Funny, Economy, Adult
The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night "pervert" revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco.
Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Economy
New research from Harvard Business School suggests that federal spending in states appears to cause local businesses to cut back rather than grow. A conversation with Joshua Coval .
Government, Incompetence, Funny, Oops, Economy
WASHINGTON (AP) - More than 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each went to people who were either dead or in prison, a government investigator says in a new report. The payments, which were part of last year's massive economic recovery package, were meant to increase consumer spending to help stimulate the economy.
Mr. Obama really believed that government spending would unleash a robust recovery in employment and housing—an “economy built to last.” Now that this hasn’t happened and with the Congressional Budget Office predicting a possible recession for 2013, Team Obama claims these woeful results were the best that could have been expected. The problem with this line is that every President who has inherited a recession in modern times has done better. . . . Under Mr. Obama, measured on the basis of jobs, GDP growth and incomes, this has been by far the meekest recovery from the past 10 recessions.
Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Economy, Debt
The jobs created and saved by the economic stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed on Feb. 17, 2009 cost at a minimum an average of $228,055 each, according to data released yesterday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Democrat, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Economy
Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer, On Friday July 30, 2010, 8:34 am EDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- The recession was deeper than the government previously thought. The Commerce Department, in revisions issued Friday, estimates the economy shrank 2.6 percent last year -- the steepest drop since 1946. That's worse than the 2.4 percent decline originally estimated.
Democrat, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Funny, Oops, Economy
White House press secretary Jay Carney says the Recovery Act added several million jobs and lowered the unemployment rate. According to Carney, the "goals" of the stimulus package "have been met." A reporter asked Carney why unemployment is at 9% and not 7%, the percentage projected if the stimulus worked. Carney dismissed the question. "We've said repeatedly that we don't want to relitigate the battles of the past," Carney told the reporter.
A reporter asked Carney why unemployment is at 9% and not 7%, the percentage projected if the stimulus worked. Carney dismissed the question. "We've said repeatedly that we don't want to relitigate the battles of the past," Carney told the reporter.
Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Economy
The $787 billion stimulus plan is turning out to be far less stimulating than its architects expected. Back in early January, when Barack Obama was still President-elect, two of his chief economic advisers — leading proponents of a stimulus bill — predicted that the passage of a large economic-aid package would boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%. It hasn't quite worked out that way.
Democrat, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Economy
[Jul 2015]: The economic expansion—already the worst on record since World War II—is weaker than previously thought, according to newly revised data. From 2012 through 2014, the economy grew at an all-too-familiar rate of 2% annually, according to three years of revised figures the Commerce Department released Thursday.