American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- Sufficient Stimulus?

• How much of this economic activity from the relevant spending and tax cuts will actually take place this year and early next year in time to speed-up the recovery, which will eventually happen anyway?

• Will there be a “multiplier” impact of this spending, if any? In an economy with a lot of slack, Davis notes the extra resources from the “stimulus” may be otherwise idle and the multiplier may actually be greater than one. He says that some politicians and analysts project a multiplier of up to 1.5 for ARRA—which he feels is an unlikely number. In a “full employment” economy, the net impact would be zero since the resources would be otherwise employed.