I Haven't Heard Anything that Hints That This Sort of Thing Is a Consideration at All...

Andrew Gelman:

Is it 1930? - Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science: Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute reports:

Goldman Sachs' latest forecast (and they've been pretty accurate so far) is that unemployment will rise to 9.9% by early 2011 and trend down to 9.7% for the last quarter of 2011. Obviously, this is a simply awful scenario but it seems one that is being accepted. That is, we seem to be in the process of accepting the unacceptable. Note that this scenario probably assumes the passage of the limited efforts now being considered in Congress.

One might be surprised that Obama and congressional Democrats are not doing more to try to bring unemployment down. On the other hand, just to speak in generalities (not knowing any of the people involved), I would think that Obama would be much much more worried about the economy doing well in 2010 and then crashing in 2012. A crappy economy through 2011 and then improvement in 2012--that would be his ideal, no? Not that he would have the ability to time this sort of thing.