Believe the government?

There are a lot of economic theories one way or another about government spending, taxation, expectations, and the lot, but let's consider this very simple chart.

Obama's economic advisers came up with this little handy chart about what would happen to unemployment with and without the recovery (IE: massive government spending) to help sell the American people on the plan. Now, you can either argue that they screwed up and got it wrong from the start (by using the wrong economic theory), or they screwed up and implemented the plan incorrectly - either way, they screwed up. For the record, I'm on the side that they used the wrong theory.

(this chart is borrowed from Dr. Mankiw, econ professor at Harvard)