Get a Model, Plug in Guesses, Cure Unemployment: Caroline Baum

Just when you thought you’d heard the last of “jobs created or saved,” the Obama administration’s quarterly report card on its $814 billion fiscal stimulus, along comes the Federal Reserve with its own model-derived guesstimates.

The Fed’s full menu of securities purchases, starting with $1.7 trillion of Treasuries, agency and mortgage-backed bonds in late 2008 and 2009 and including the current $600 billion of intermediate- and long-term Treasuries, “will have raised private payroll employment by about 3 million jobs,” said Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen.