So the stimulus--the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or ARRA--is starting to wind down. What are the results?

In the run-up to this weekend's G-8 summit at Camp David, journalists have unfavorably compared European "austerity" with Barack Obama's economic policies.

In his latest AEI Economic Outlook, The Limits of Monetary and Fiscal Policy, AEI scholar and economist John Makin warns against further fiscal and monetary stimulus as pressure increases on the Fed to initiate another round of quantitative easing.

When he was director of central intelligence, Leon Panetta earned a reputation as an energetic advocate for his agency. When he replaced Robert Gates at the Pentagon, it was reasonable to hope that Panetta would continue to play the role of a senior statesman.

President Barack Obama has been on a tour of college campuses touting proposals to lower student loan repayments for college graduates. He hopes to rekindle the enthusiasm of young voters, who in 2008 favored him over Sen. John McCain by more than two-to-one.

Ironically, these same young Americans...

Democratic districts received a lot more stimulus money than Republican districts and the districts of Democrats who were reelected in 2010 received even more money than districts of Democrats who were not. These patterns likely exist because more-powerful Democrats were able to capture more pork, and because pork spending helped candidates get reelected.

The effectiveness of the ARRA depends, quite simply, on the stimulus spending occurring in a timely fashion.

With the economy once again teetering on the edge of recession, policymakers will inevitably propose another round of stimulus spending. You can bet on it--just as you can bet that any such spending won't help the economy.