75 billion vs. 281 million.. hummm

I can save the country and tax payers alot of money with my stimulus plan.

how about every person in america recieves a million dollars.. my plan calls for the spending of less than 350 million dollars.. I bet we would all be able to make our house payment and would take on a new car payment.. maybe go to the store and buy somthing.. call me crazy..

If I recieve another 1200.00 dollar check.. I’ll make sure I pay the gas company the back money I owe them..that will get the ol’ econemy up and running again.!

ANOTHER 75bil… dollars.. where the hell is it going.. ?
It’s sure as hell not going to the people who paid it in the first damn place!

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.” Author unverified

And in terms of a government mandated cram-down clause, instead of allowing a judge to force a bank to lose money on a loan, the individual should be able to petition the government for a housing grant or low/zero interest loan that would have the net result of lowering a monthly payment. Individual can’t make ends meet, asks the government for money, government agrees, mechanism to give money from government to bank, bank lowers monthly bill. It adds a nice layer of bureaucracy for the left (government as Dad, deciding whether or not to give Junior any more allowance), and assuages the right’s fear of the government meddling any more with the financial markets.

At any rate, there should be at least 30 days of analysis, modeling, review, and revision on this thing. Trying to get it passed artificially quickly will result in the same fiasco that Bush led last year (and agreed to by McCain and Obama).

And if the pork stays in, will Obama have the cajones to veto it?

As we listen to pols, pundits, economists, and self-appointed analysts, we should keep in mind that no one has a very good idea of how to make a comprehensive counter-cyclical fiscal policy work. No one. We haven’t really done it before!

I’m drawn to wonder what the real reason is for why this is so. And I think it’s because the government really just doesn’t have the power to tell people to feel more optimistic than the circumstances in front of them warrant.

We’ve had a very painful collapse of a real estate bubble financed by easy credit, and it has led to cascading effects. Other investments premised on the bubble have collapsed. And individual economic behavior predicated on these trends that have now collapsed? No longer feasible. Like taking out home equity loans to finance household deficit spending. Like using a home equity line of credit to buy stock. Never smart, but looking especiallly dumb now.

Volatility is a huge enemy right now, and that volatility is a manifestation of the fact that people don’t know what to think, or how much faith to have. This huge stimulus package is an attempt to get people to think things will be OK, but what it can’t actually do is provide stability. Only we can do that. Collectively. We will all have to go through more economic pain until a new stable sense of valuation is established. For all kinds of stuff.

Current circumstances are quite similar to the prisoner’s dilemma. Stability and success will come through individual actions that express faith. But the negative consequences of such action will be extremely high if that faith is unfounded. So fear leads folks to take pessimistic actions that serve individual self-interest but are bad for us collectively.

Do you take out a mortgage and buy a house? or do you liquidate your investments and accounts and buy gold and batten down the hatches? It’s a problem.

When Obama said that his goal was 75% of the spending in the first 18 months, I was not impressed. 25% of a ton of money is still a ton of money. I believe the Democrats are putting stuff in this bill just to get them through without much debate. As you said, some of it might be worth it, but why not debate it on it’s own merits instead of pushing it through as part of a stimulus package?

The one issue I might disagree with you is tax credits for new home purchases. It seems to me that making buying homes artificially easy is part of what got us into this mess. On the other hand, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to soften the fall a little, so I’m torn on that one.