Kirkland perhaps you would care to explain...

[El Kabong]

$1 billion for Amtrak, which hasn’t earned a profit in four decades.

$2 billion to help subsidize child care.

$400 million for research into global warming.

$2.4 billion for projects to demonstrate how carbon greenhouse gas can be safely removed from the atmosphere.

$650 million for coupons to help consumers convert their TV sets from analog to digital, part of the digital TV conversion.

$600 million to buy a new fleet of cars for federal employees and government departments.

$75 million to fund programs to help people quit smoking.

$21 million to re-sod the National Mall, which suffered heavy use during the Inauguration.

$2.25 billion for national parks. This item has sparked calls for an investigation, because the chief lobbyist of the National Parks Association is the son of Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wisc. The $2,25 billion is about equal to the National Park Service’s entire annual budget. The Washington Times reports it is a threefold increase over what was originally proposed for parks in the stimulus bill. Obey is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

$335 million for treatment and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. $4.19 billion to stave off foreclosures via the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. The bill allows nonprofits to compete with cities and states for $3.44 billion of the money, which means a substantial amount of it will be captured by ACORN, the controversial activist group currently under federal investigation for vote fraud. Another $750 million would be exclusively reserved for nonprofits such as ACORN – meaning cities and states are barred from receiving that money. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., charges the money could appear to be a “payoff” for the partisan political activities community groups in the last election cycle.

$44 million to renovate the headquarters building of the Agriculture Department.

$32 billion for a “smart electricity grid to minimize waste.

$87 billion of Medicaid funds, to aid states.

$53.4 billion for science facilities, high speed Internet, and miscellaneous energy and environmental programs.

$13 billion to repair and weatherize public housing, help the homeless, repair foreclosed homes.

$20 billion for quicker depreciation and write-offs for equipment.

$10.3 billion for tax credits to help families defray the cost of college tuition.

$20 billion over five years for an expanded food stamp program.

.....I don't think they can just throw money at the problem and expect it to go away especially when this bill doesn't come close to touching the toxic assets the banks still hold.

[JT Rock]

I personally would only like about 3 million for me... Thats certainly a hell of a lot cheaper than some of the shit on his list

[Kirkland Laing]

$1 billion for Amtrak, which hasn’t earned a profit in four decades.

$2 billion to help subsidize child care.

$400 million for research into global warming.

$2.4 billion for projects to demonstrate how carbon greenhouse gas can be safely removed from the atmosphere.

$650 million for coupons to help consumers convert their TV sets from analog to digital, part of the digital TV conversion.

$600 million to buy a new fleet of cars for federal employees and government departments.

$75 million to fund programs to help people quit smoking.

$21 million to re-sod the National Mall, which suffered heavy use during the Inauguration.

$2.25 billion for national parks. This item has sparked calls for an investigation, because the chief lobbyist of the National Parks Association is the son of Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wisc. The $2,25 billion is about equal to the National Park Service’s entire annual budget. The Washington Times reports it is a threefold increase over what was originally proposed for parks in the stimulus bill. Obey is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

$335 million for treatment and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. $4.19 billion to stave off foreclosures via the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. The bill allows nonprofits to compete with cities and states for $3.44 billion of the money, which means a substantial amount of it will be captured by ACORN, the controversial activist group currently under federal investigation for vote fraud. Another $750 million would be exclusively reserved for nonprofits such as ACORN – meaning cities and states are barred from receiving that money. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., charges the money could appear to be a “payoff” for the partisan political activities community groups in the last election cycle.

$44 million to renovate the headquarters building of the Agriculture Department.

$32 billion for a “smart electricity grid to minimize waste.

$87 billion of Medicaid funds, to aid states.

$53.4 billion for science facilities, high speed Internet, and miscellaneous energy and environmental programs.

$13 billion to repair and weatherize public housing, help the homeless, repair foreclosed homes.

$20 billion for quicker depreciation and write-offs for equipment.

$10.3 billion for tax credits to help families defray the cost of college tuition.

$20 billion over five years for an expanded food stamp program.

.....I don't think they can just throw money at the problem and expect it to go away especially when this bill doesn't come close to touching the toxic assets the banks still hold.

All these things create jobs. They put money into people's pockets, who then spend the money on goods and services. The people who supply the goods and services then spend/invest the money and it continues on. The good old Keynesian "multiplier". We 're back to using keynesian economics because monetary policy, the preferred government method of stimulating/slowing the economy of the past thirty years, no longer works anymore due to the collapse of the financial system. It'd be great if we could just fuck around with the interest rate (monetary policy) and fix this but due to the system being so fucked that even zero interest rates (currently) are having zero effect the only policy option left to stimulate the economy is for the government to spend money. Which they're doing.

Take food stamps. Food stamps actually supply the biggest bang for a buck that you can buy with your stimulus dollars, because they're spent immediately by the recipient, pumping the money straight into the economy. Here's a table that shows the most effective ways of spending stimulus money :




So you can see almost all of the things on your list have a positive effect after they're initially spent, apart from all the things the GOP are trying to force onto the stimulus bill like various types of tax cuts.


What Obama is doing wrong however is the bank bailout thing. He's just extending and massively increasing the corporate socialist Bush response to the current crisis. It looks like he's as bought and paid for by Wall Street as Bush was. I'll have more to say about the bailout side of things (which will total trillions eventually, far in excess of the piddling $850 billion stimulus bill) when they announce it officially.

So in a nutshell : the stimulus bill is a separate thing from the bank bailout programs. It's being spent to arrest the plunge of the American economy into deflation and depression, which is where it's headed if no stimulus happens. These things may still happen but the stimulus bill is an attempt to prevent them.

[Kirkland Laing]

Please ask questions about economic stuff you don't follow and they will be answered. Infallibly.

[El Kabong]

"Unfortunately in this world there is no tooth fairy. And the government doesn’t create anything; it just redistributes. Whenever the government bails someone out of trouble, they always put someone into trouble, plus of course a toll for the troll. Every $100 billion in bailout requires at least $130 billion in taxes, where the $30 billion extra is the cost of getting government involved." - Arthur Laffer


All food stamps do is addict people to that entitlement program....in the real world, the one where I live and everyone else besides you live this magic money doesn't appear out of thin air it's taken from people who WORK for a living that doesn't help the economy

[Trainer Monkey]

"Unfortunately in this world there is no tooth fairy. And the government doesn’t create anything; it just redistributes. Whenever the government bails someone out of trouble, they always put someone into trouble, plus of course a toll for the troll. Every $100 billion in bailout requires at least $130 billion in taxes, where the $30 billion extra is the cost of getting government involved." - Arthur Laffer


All food stamps do is addict people to that entitlement program....in the real world, the one where I live and everyone else besides you live this magic money doesn't appear out of thin air it's taken from people who WORK for a living that doesn't help the economy

Laffer,the man who wrote the thrice failed theory of supply side economics on the back of a cocktail napkin at a party
Good source

[Kirkland Laing]

The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits jumped to a 26-year high last week, according to government data on Thursday that pointed to a rapid deterioration in the economy.

Jobless Claims Hit 26-Year High; Productivity Spikes - Economy * US * News * Story - CNBC.com

US credit card delinquencies hit a record high in January, and further deterioration is likely as the economy slows down and unemployment rises, Fitch Ratings says.
Payments at least 60 days late rose almost half a percentage point last month to a record 3.75 per cent, said Fitch. Credit card lenders also wrote off loans to delinquent borrowers at close to record levels, and such “charge-offs” were expected to breach records in the coming months.



FT.com / Companies / Banks - US credit card delinquencies at record high






Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Former Las Vegas card counter turned billionaire bond trader Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., said the U.S. may slump into a “mini depression” unless policy makers spend trillions of dollars to spur growth.
“This economy needs support from the government, a check from the government in the trillions,” Gross said today in a Bloomberg Television interview from Pimco’s headquarters in Newport Beach, California. “There is a potential catastrophe if the U.S. government continues to focus on billions of dollars.”
President Barack Obama has proposed a stimulus package intended to spur growth estimated at as much as $900 billion. The U.S. economy shrank by 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter, the most since 1982 as consumer spending recorded the worst slide in the postwar era, the Commerce Department said last week.


Bloomberg.com: Worldwide




Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Moody’s Investors Service is reviewing the ratings of $302.6 billion in commercial mortgage-backed securities as real-estate values drop and property owners fall behind on payments.

The U.S. recession is crimping consumer spending and hurting business growth, making it harder for commercial property owners to make their payments. Should Moody’s decide to cut the ratings, investors including banks and insurers may need to sell CMBS holdings to maintain required levels of capital.
“Property values declined sharply in 2008, and we anticipate further declines over the next 12 to 24 months,” Moody’s analyst Nick Levidy said in the statement. “Delinquencies on CMBS loans are also on the rise, and we expect the pace to accelerate as macroeconomic pressures take a toll on property cash flows.”


Bloomberg.com: Worldwide





Japan’s exports plunged by a record in December, signaling companies will be forced to shut factory lines and fire more workers, driving the economy deeper into recession.

Bloomberg.com: Japan



Warren heads the five-member congressional oversight panel overseeing the TARP, and said that the group on Friday will issue a report suggesting Treasury has significantly overpaid for the assets it has purchased from financial institutions. She said an analysis of 10 of the TARP transactions, when extrapolated for all of the purchases made in 2008, suggests Treasury paid $254 billion for assets worth approximately $176 billion, a shortfall of $78 billion.

"Treasury paid substantially more for the assets it purchased under the TARP than their then-current market value," Warren said.

TARP Watchdog: Treasury Overpaid For TARP Investments



The financial institution that owns the bond calculates the value at 97 cents on the dollar, or a mere 3 percent loss. But S.& P. estimates it is worth 87 cents, based on the current loan-default rate, and could be worth 53 cents under a bleaker situation that contemplates a doubling of defaults. But even that might be optimistic, because the bond traded recently for just 38 cents on the dollar, reflecting the even gloomier outlook of investors.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/bu...alue.html?_r=1



The US economy is suffering its steepest downturn since at least the 1970s and could descend into a depression, Jeff Immelt, General Electric’s chief executive, warned on Thursday.

He said businesses and consumers alike were struggling to contend with tumultuous markets and a financial-services industry under siege.

Unlike the other downturns that I’ve been a part of, this one is faced with limited liquidity,” Mr Immelt, GE’s CEO since 2001 told a conference. “Once you break through ’74-’75, you don’t stop ’til you get to 1929.”

FT.com / Companies / Industrials - GE chief warns on US depression threat

[Kirkland Laing]

[killersheep]

"Unfortunately in this world there is no tooth fairy. And the government doesn’t create anything; it just redistributes. Whenever the government bails someone out of trouble, they always put someone into trouble, plus of course a toll for the troll. Every $100 billion in bailout requires at least $130 billion in taxes, where the $30 billion extra is the cost of getting government involved." - Arthur Laffer


All food stamps do is addict people to that entitlement program....in the real world, the one where I live and everyone else besides you live this magic money doesn't appear out of thin air it's taken from people who WORK for a living that doesn't help the economy

On August 28, 2006, Art Laffer appeared on Kudlow & Company[4] to debate Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. Laffer made a bet with Schiff that there wouldn't be a recession, and that the housing bubble wouldn't bust in the next year or two. Both agreed to put their credibility on the line and the winner would receive a penny.
Laffer appeared almost two years after that interview, on "Real Time with Bill Maher", on October 24, 2008. Maher asked him, "Have you paid off that bet?" Laffer replied that he had not.

Arthur Laffer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sorry about the cut and paste........................

[Kirkland Laing]

"Unfortunately in this world there is no tooth fairy. And the government doesn’t create anything; it just redistributes. Whenever the government bails someone out of trouble, they always put someone into trouble, plus of course a toll for the troll. Every $100 billion in bailout requires at least $130 billion in taxes, where the $30 billion extra is the cost of getting government involved." - Arthur Laffer


All food stamps do is addict people to that entitlement program....in the real world, the one where I live and everyone else besides you live this magic money doesn't appear out of thin air it's taken from people who WORK for a living that doesn't help the economy

On August 28, 2006, Art Laffer appeared on Kudlow & Company[4] to debate Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. Laffer made a bet with Schiff that there wouldn't be a recession, and that the housing bubble wouldn't bust in the next year or two. Both agreed to put their credibility on the line and the winner would receive a penny.
Laffer appeared almost two years after that interview, on "Real Time with Bill Maher", on October 24, 2008. Maher asked him, "Have you paid off that bet?" Laffer replied that he had not.

Arthur Laffer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sorry about the cut and paste........................

Here's what Greg Mankiw, George W Bush's chief economic advisor, had to say about Laffer and the supply side people :

N. Gregory Mankiw (199, Principles of Economics (New York: Dryden: 0030982383).
Thinking Like an Economist: Why Economists Disagree: Charlatans and Cranks:
pp. 29-30: An example of fad economics occurred in 1980, when a small group fo economists advised presidential candidate Ronald Reagan that an across-the-board cut in income tax rates would raise tax revenue. They argued that if people could keep a higher fraction of their income, people would work harder to earn more income. Even though tax rates would be lower, income would raise by so much, they claimed, that tax revenue would rise. Almost all professional economists, including most of those who supported Reagan's proposal to cut taxes, viewed this outcome as too optimistic. Lower tax rates might encourage people to work harder, and this extra effort would offset the direct effects of lower tax rates to some extent. But there was no credible evidence that work effort would rise by enough to caues tax revenues to rise in the face of lower tax rates. George Bush, also a presidential candidate in 1980, agreed with most of the professional economists: He called this idea "voodoo economics." Nonetheless, the argument was appealing to Reagan, and it shaped the 1980 presidential campaign and the economic policies of the 1980s.... Congress passes the cut in tax rates... but the tax cut did not cause tax revenue to rise... tax revenue fell... government began a long period of deficit spending... largest peacetime increase in the government debt in U.S. history. Fads can make experts seem less united than the actually are... when the economics profession appears in disarry, you should ask whether the disagreement is real or manufactured... [by] some snake-oil salesman who is trying to sell a miracle cure...







Lyle.



People who have endorsed the Republican House caucus's objections to the stimulus package:

Donald Luskin, Chief Investment Officer, Trend Macrolytics LLC, Stupidest Man Alive EmeritusTM: "Government spending does not create incentives for labor, innovation and investment. Instead of spending $1 trillion in Washington, let Washington forgive $1 trillion in tax revenues to create incentives for millions of individuals and firms to get the economy going again, one dollar at a time."

People who have not the Republican House caucus's objections to the stimulus package:

Eddie Lazear, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Matthew Slaughter, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Katherine Baicker, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Ben Bernanke, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Harvey Rosen, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Kristen Forbes, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
N. Gregory Mankiw, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Randall Kroszner, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Mark McClellan, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
R. Glenn Hubbard, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Paul Wonnacott, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George H. W. Bush)
Richard Schmalensee, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George H. W. Bush)
John Taylor, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George H. W. Bush)
Michael Boskin, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George H. W. Bush)
Michael Mussa, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
Thomas Moore, Member, President's Council of Economic n SpriyAdvisers (Ronald Reagan)
Beryl Sprinkel, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
William Poole, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
Martin Feldstein, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
Jerry Jordan, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
William Niskanen, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
Murray Weidenbaum, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
Burton Malkiel, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Gerald Ford)
Paul MacAvoy, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Gerald Ford)
Alan Greenspan, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Gerald Ford)
Gary Seevers, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Gerald Ford)
Marina von Neumann Whitman, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Richard Nixon)
Paul McCracken, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Richard Nixon)

In fact, no current or former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers-- Democrat or Republican, living or dead, sane or insane-- has signed up for the Republican House caucus's list of economists opposed to the stimulus package.

[AdamGB]

What do you think will help the economy Lyle?

[El Kabong]

What do you think will help the economy Lyle?

Having the government step back and allow businessmen to do business....I don't think we should let them (and by them I mean both business AND government) go around all willy nilly like Clinton and W did. I think there should be not new laws and regulations but more oversight and more transparency in business and government.

Sure our infastructure could use a bit of a tune up but looking at the rest of the bill, I really don't think that crap does anything but say "Thank You" to all the liberals that support Obama. $6 BILLION for University rebuilding....have you looked at how much it costs to go to college lately? Do you think they really need that? If there is price gouging anywhere it's in higher education.

We're eventually going to have to pay some of this back I would just hope that the government guys would be a little bit more cautious with that kind of money instead of yelling and screaming about getting this bill passed.

[Kirkland Laing]

"Unfortunately in this world there is no tooth fairy. And the government doesn’t create anything; it just redistributes. Whenever the government bails someone out of trouble, they always put someone into trouble, plus of course a toll for the troll. Every $100 billion in bailout requires at least $130 billion in taxes, where the $30 billion extra is the cost of getting government involved." - Arthur Laffer


All food stamps do is addict people to that entitlement program....in the real world, the one where I live and everyone else besides you live this magic money doesn't appear out of thin air it's taken from people who WORK for a living that doesn't help the economy

I don't understand why posting a quote from a guy now regarded as a discredited joke answers my post. I know it hurts when you see money handed to black people Lyle but it's actually the best way you can spend stimulus money, as proven by economist who've been proved consistently correct over generations. You'd better hope it works too otherwise things look very grim indeed for anybody starting out in the world.