Buffet Backs Second Stimulus
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Economy, Money
Whenever Warren talks, people listen, but my gut tells me that a second stimulus is still politically impossible right now. Especially since nearly 90% of the original $787B is left to spend (which Dems are bemoaning)
Still, he has some entertaining euphemisms for the first round…
“I think that a second one may well be called for,” Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, told “Good Morning America” today. But, he added, “you hope it doesn’t get watered down in many ways.”Buffett cautioned that a second stimulus package, like the first, won’t be “a panacea,” because stimulus packages take time to work. He criticized lawmakers’ work on the first stimulus package, which contained $787 billion in spending.
“Our first stimulus bill … was sort of like taking half a tablet of Viagra and having also a bunch of candy mixed in … as if everybody was putting in enough for their own constituents,” he said. “It doesn’t have really quite the wall that might have been anticipated there.”
But, again, the second round of stimulus faces stiff competition since Republicans are convinced the first round won’t work…
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., was among the GOP members of Congress who said at a House committee hearing that the $787 billion spending plan had failed to create jobs and hold unemployment at 8 percent.“I am convinced that it won’t work,” said Issa. “Unfortunately, recent economic data has validated my opposition.”
The jobless rate hit 9.5 percent in June, the United States lost 3.4 million jobs in the past six months as the recession showed greater tenacity than expected.
Hrmm…ya know, after the Iraq debacle you’d think Republicans be a bit more understanding when goals aren’t immediately hit. Sure, many Dems were critical of the war once it started going downhill, but lawmakers kept on voting to fund it because they didn’t want to hamstring the troops.
And let’s remember that ZERO House Republicans voted for the stimulus and by all accounts that decision was based on what the base was saying. Interesting to see how an event like 9/11 can force Dems into a corner, but our entire financial system collapsing, and thus our economy collapsing with it, didn’t seem to make Republicans question their strategies/philosophies/beliefs at all.
Anybody else find that a bit odd?
Because, let’s face it, 9/11 was horrific, but all it lead to was a bunch of fear mongering and an ill conceived war which we didn’t need to fight. In other words, the aftershocks of 9/11 didn’t really need to have an effect on that many people, but it did because we went into Iraq and far too many Americans and Iraqis died.
On the other side of the coin, we needed to fight the economic collapse because if we hadn’t the financial system would have imploded. I think that’s well established by now, and while I understand any issue will have naysayers…letting those big banks fail would have sent tens of thousands of small businesses into bankruptcy and we would have lost a lot more jobs. I don’t know if it would have resulted in another Great Depression, but things would have gotten bad extremely quickly.
So then, given all this…why is everybody saying the first stimulus won’t work if the majority of this money has yet to spent? True, the administration underestimated how bad the economy was, but the jobs will come back eventually because people will start spending again. Even if this is a jobless recovery, people will still start spending again. Maybe not this year, but in 2010? 2011?
I think it’s a pretty safe bet at this point that we’ll rebound, but feel free to tell me why I’m crazy…
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 and is filed under Economy, Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
It isn’t that I don’t agree with you, because I do. And I still do not understand the endless grandstanding and hypocrisy on the Republican side, but I do think you’re being a bit too decisive here. In my opinion, Buffet’s words should be a conversation on the reasons why the Republicans should really soften their approach, and not another reason to start pointing fingers…
July 9th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
No, Justin, you’re not crazy;
Who’s crazy here is the media that refuses to take simple, factual information, communicate that info, and make opinions based on it to help people understand this political nonsense. Instead they act like the WWF with their knock down, drag out style of political analysis.
Is it crazy to put your hopes in a 2 year plan for economic recovery that the Dems have bet the bank on? I don’t think so when, first of all, the economic recovery plan was started at the end of the previous Republican Administration! And it was continued with many of the original Federal Agency heads, which you would think might encourage bipartisan backing. But, instead, all the Republicans can offer as a solution is TAX CUTS!
Which leads me to my second point: Try to imagine what would have happened if the House Republican were in charge and we passed NOTHING except more of the same from the previous ten years – more TAX CUTS! Did anybody happen to mention that we’re only four months into a two year recovery plan and that it may be crazy to be talking about its’ failure before it hardly even starts?
Is it crazy to imagine the financial world in total collapse? Insanity has a very short term memory, doesn’t it?