Who Do You Believe: Economic Expert or Know-Nothing Eric Cantor?

I watched this discussion last night on the NewsHour and thought it was highly revealing with regard go to the state of economic stimulus. In particular, note the complete contradiction between someone who actually knows what he's talking about (Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody's) and someone (Eric Cantor) who knows absolutely nothing about economics. Here are the key quotes, you decide.

Mark Zandi: "Yeah, it's working pretty close to what I would have expected at this point in time; it's still early days, you know we're only 4 or 5 months into the package, but state governments are getting checks, unemployed workers are getting more benefits, Social Security recipients got a check in the mail in May, people who are working have lower withholding, business tax cuts are filtering through, and we're even getting some infrastructure spending, so everything is going according to script, at least so far."

Eric Cantor: "Blah blah blah...it's not working...blah blah blah...I have no clue what I'm talking about...blah blah blah..."

Ha, ok, that wasn't really Eric Cantor's quote, but if anyone cares to watch this and try to find one intelligent, or even semi-coherent, comment made by Cantor, please let me know. As far as I can tell, Cantor has absolutely no understanding of economics, macro or otherwise. The fact is, and I know this is an extremely difficult concept for people like Eric Cantor (aka, "idiots") to understand, but - and I'll say this really slow - It. Takes. Time. As in, "it takes time to turn a huge economy like America's around, especially after 8 years of having it steered in the completely wrong direction by Eric Cantor's Republicans.

Now, all of a sudden, Cantor - having voted against doing anything to fix the inherited Bush economic mess - wants the Titanic turned around in a few months, despite the fact that every economist knows it takes a few quarters for a fiscal stimulus to have its full impact. Which is why Mark Zandi correctly notes that "the biggest economic impact from the stimulus isn't now, it's really going to be in the third quarter, Q3, and more importantly in Q4 of this year, so we really won't know with any degree of certainty until very late this year whether this stimulus plan is working and working well enough." Of course, know-nothing Eric Cantor thinks he knows better than a real economist, as he bloviates and demagogues about how, after a few months, the stimulus has already failed. Obviously, Cantor is not the brightest bulb on the block, but this is pathetic nonetheless. Either he knows he's spouting bull excretions and is just doing it for cynical political purposes, or he doesn't know. In the first case, he's just your typical, smarmy, hypocritical Republican politician. In the second case, he's just the village idiot. Take your pick, or possibly a combination thereof.