...that any of the administration's economic initiatives are actually going to work?

I realize that for some proponents, actual success doesn't matter -- or more accurately, success is DEFINED as the mere fact of confiscating, allocating, and regulating, so that the "success" of such a policy is automatic. Such a policy is also brilliantly unfalsifiable -- it can never fail, and if it is ever accused of not accomplishing more meaningful results, the inevitable rejoinder is that more of the same is needed, because obviously there wasn't enough the first time. Certain interest groups have built their existence on this very theory.

But for most of us, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.* Does anyone -- in Washington, on Wall Street, in California, anywhere -- have a sincere belief that any of the stimulus/spending/tax/regulation efforts will actually produce growth and prosperity?

I recognize that occasionally some policies may be useful purely for their placebo effect. A famous example is the war-time scrap metal drives -- pots and pans may not be all that useful for building ships and planes, but the morale effect is worth something. But placebos should at least do no harm.

*Perhaps reflective of the age we live in, this time-honored saying usually gets shortened to the largely meaningless "the proof is in the pudding." But the mere existence of pudding proves nothing -- at least, nothing relevant. What matters is whether it tastes good, and the proof of that is in the eating -- which is what people used to say.