Chart of the Day, Times Two

In case you took a break from your morning browse of The Wall Street Journal, we wanted to flag two especially illustrative charts from today’s edition. The first comes from “China Output Tops Japan” and shows that China is now the world’s second largest economy, edging out Japan in a straight comparison (If you account for China’s low cost of living, it hasn’t been close for some time).

The other (full page) chart reviews the spend-out rates of the stimulus across all the different agencies (transportation, energy, education etc). The $862 billion stimulus package had three main components: 1) tax breaks which accounted for ~$336B; 2) money for safety net programs and transfers to patch state budget holes ( ~$296B); and 3) infrastructure-related investments, which accounted for the $230 billion balance. The first and second buckets have, more or less, been paid out.It’s the third bucket that has lagged behind.As the WSJ reports, “so far, $182 billion of the infrastructure money has been awarded, though the government has paid out only $66 billion of the total.”

What’s striking about reviewing all of these charts is just how slow the spend -out rates have actually been. In particular, a quick scan of the funds that were allocated for infrastructure is useful because it’s quite clear that the projects were not as “shovel-ready” as originally promised. Be sure to check out the full-page infographic, but here is just the stimulus-related funding that falls under the  Department of Transportation.