An interview with Robert Barro - The Atlantic Business Channel: "The last thing is just about the stimulus bills as it stands. Two things here. One thing is what do you think about the ratio of spending to tax relief in the bill. And the second is, if you judge it by Larry Summers standard -- that stimulus be temporary, timely and targeted -- does it clear the bar?

This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don't know what to say. I mean it's wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don't think will work, so I don't think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don't think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn't really geared toward incentives. It's not really geared to lowering tax rates; it's more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it's garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn't really matter that much."
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Robert Barro is a famous Harvard economist who specializes in macroeconomics. He goes on to imply that Lawrence Summers is not high on his list of brain trust candidates.
ps: I am not an economist and have no firm opinion on whether the bailout/stimulus/boondoggle will prove to be a success or a failure. However, as a political scientist I do know a porkfest when I see one. That scares me. It would be an amazing coincidence if a bill was (a) perfectly tailored to pull the US out of the worst recession in decades; (b) driven entirely by liberal Democrats, and (c) coincidentally happened to fatten up all the interest groups that shoveled cash as Obama & Co. during the presidential campaign. We shall see, however. If in three years bread costs $10 per loaf, we will probably think the porky Obama bailout bill failed. Hope that doesn't transpire and we end up hailing Obama as an economic genius.