I think it's worth bearing in mind that, to some extent, Centaur Station wasn't designed by the Tev leadership to boost the economy so much as to keep themselves in power. Consider that a big reason for the GTVA existing is to protect its people from the Shivans. In the last war, despite their contingency plans succeeding in containing things, they ultimately failed, and they lost Capella and the
Colossus -- which took 20 years and countless trillions of credits to build -- in the process. If the GTVA can't protect them with that, the argument of the man-on-the-street goes, then they aren't good for much.
So now there's riots, protests, and separatists movements not seen since the NTF Rebellion. When Admiral Petrarch comes forward to suggest going back to Sol, it gives the Terrans something to rally around and support. It doesn't matter whether it boosts the economy or not; indeed, from the Vasudan reaction to the news, the Terrans are throwing money at the portal they could be using to rebuild. What matters is that it keeps the GTVA in play until they get back to Sol and, hopefully, use its infrastructure to stabilize the economy. It was, in many ways, a stopgap solution, but it was better than civil war. Obviously, their priorities changed after the Sol gate was rebuilt.
Side note: While we're on the subject of the economic history of Blue Planet, I did a
writeup on my wiki user page as to how the GTA's economic collapse during the Isolation could have played out. This isn't canon, just a reconstruction of what I've pieced together from canon sources. It's not completely finished -- I'm trying to document the history of a 50-year time frame, and it's taking a while.