Story Archives of 'Federal Stimulus'

At a recent talk to the Business and Professional Women organization I focused on two related issues: If this recession was our Katrina, how much damage did it inflict on the economic infrastructure? One thing we don't know is when credit markets will recover.

So it was with some interest that I read this article in the Washington Post. I think it captures our current economic situation, nationally, and points our eyes in the right direction as we look for signs of true recovery.

Depending on how you count a job, see my story on this way back when, stimulus spending has paid for 3,007 jobs or 1,862 as of the end of September. The total hours covered is the same -- nearly 3.9 million hours -- but depending on how you divide those hours into full-time jobs, you end up with different answers.

A billion here, a billion there; pretty soon you're talking real money. Personal income in NH rose about 100 million dollars between the first and second quarters of 2009 for a grand total of $56,330,000,000.

As a percentage, that's not much but there would have been a steeper decline if federal stimulus payments in the form of higher unemployment checks and other programs had not gone up by about a billion dollars from a year ago. Total transfer payments were $8.38 billion.

From Carol Shea-Porter's office, we read that NH Dept. of Environmental Services will get $1.8 million for a revolving load fund to deal with what are generally called brownfields. These are older industrial sites that need to be cleaned up before they can be redeveloped.

Here's the press release with a few more details.

The Justice Department announced $2,040,000 in grants to New Hampshire today. Most of the funds -- $1,860,000 -- go to UNH researchers working on children's exposure to internet crimes and media violence. The remainder, $187,800, goes to Strafford County to support Drug Courts.

The details come from a Shea-Porter press release:

UNH: $825,704 from the Recovery Act Internet Crimes Against Children Research Grants—this study is designed to help law enforcement combat technology-facilitated child exploitation crimes