In his talk earlier this month at the Council on Foreign Relations, White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said, "It is too early to know how successful our policies have been. It is not even clear how we will know ultimately whether they have succeeded, because of the difficulty of constructing a counterfactual and knowing what would have happened without intervention."
Well, it may have been too early then, but it isn't too early now. Either that, or word from Mr. Summers never made it through to President Obama. At his press conference today, Mr. Obama said, "here are some things I know for certain: In the absence of the stimulus, I think our recession would be much worse."