Kirkland perhaps you would care to explain...

[Trainer Monkey]

What happened right before those recessions rebounded
If you said raise taxes and put in money for stimulus,you would be correct.
Even the great and might Ray Gun rescinded his tax cuts

[El Kabong]

Q: How will we judge the Obama years?

A: Misery index (economics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spending ourselves silly will NOT stop the recession and propping up bad business won't help the economy either....that creates more confusion and instability.

You can post all the stuff you want to Kirkland but the majority of AMERICANS oppose this bill.

[VictorCharlie]

I take issue with borrowing a trillion dollars to help our economy. I think large portions of this bill are not pork but also not necessary. I'm all for helping people keep their homes and find jobs but I don't believe in bailing out banks/dealerships/anyone. Not every bank in America is full of toxic investments. Let these people fail. Someone else will come along and do it better and fill in the void. Lets give the market the opportunity to fix its self

[El Kabong]

I take issue with borrowing a trillion dollars to help our economy. I think large portions of this bill are not pork but also not necessary. I'm all for helping people keep their homes and find jobs but I don't believe in bailing out banks/dealerships/anyone. Not every bank in America is full of toxic investments. Let these people fail. Someone else will come along and do it better and fill in the void. Lets give the market the opportunity to fix its self

You're GOD DAMN RIGHT!


They can pass the bill without Republican support....but the question we must ask is WHY WON'T THEY? Don't get me wrong, I am really happy if they decide not to go through with this....but you have to wonder.

[Kirkland Laing]

Q: How will we judge the Obama years?

A: Misery index (economics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spending ourselves silly will NOT stop the recession and propping up bad business won't help the economy either....that creates more confusion and instability.

You can post all the stuff you want to Kirkland but the majority of AMERICANS oppose this bill.

The traditional levers that governments use to control the economy no longer work Lyle. For the last thirty years governments have controlled the economy mainly by raising/lowering interest rates. But they've already lowered interest rates to effectively zero and everything is still in freefall.

I think we can both agree on tha above three sentences. There's nothing in there that isn't obvious fact.

But the economy is still in freefall. We've never seen numbers as bad as the ones we're curently seeing, employment/productivity/confidence/investment/etc. All the numbers indicate impending disaster.

We faced the same situation in 1930. At the time Hoover chose to sit on his arse and let the market sort itself out and we all know how well that worked out. If the government does nothing now a serious Depression with a capital "D" is inevitable. Even with the stimulus it may well happen but we may as well at leat try and avoid it. The trillion dollars they'll end up spending is a piddling amount compared to how much they're going to have to spend to bail the banks out anyway.

The GOP have prescribed a "middle class tax cut" as the answer to the problem. Let's have a look at how the tax cut would affect America's middle class :





As you can see it only really benefits middle class people who earn $10000 a week or more. And those middle class people got huge tax cuts for the last eight years which totally failed to produce economic growth but did create huge government budget deficits, part of the reason everything is so fucked right now. And so the GOP's answer is more of the same policies that have fucked things up so spectacularly. The beneficiaries of the cut are making $10000 a week/day according to the graph. They're already saving a portion of their income and in these troubled times a tax cut of a fraction of their daily wage will simply be banked, giving the economy zero stimulus.


Let's look at what John McCain 2008 economic advisor Mark Zandi says gives the best bang for the stimulus buck :



So it's clear that if we want to make an attempt to avoid a Depression, and I'm sure you'll agree with me that we should at least try, then massive government spending on things like infrastructure, food stamps, unemployment insurance etc. are the way to do it. That money is pumped into the economy, stimulating it, rather than put in a bank account somewhere, stimulating bugger all.

When they eventually pass the stimulus bill I will Write my opinion of it and the likely consequences over the next couple of years. I'll also do the same when they announce the next stage of the bank bailout. If anybody out there wants anything in this post or about the current crisis explaining then ask away and I'll explain it. Then in the future we can look back at what I have Written and marvel at my Infallibility.

[Kirkland Laing]

I just want to park these two articles here for future reference for when I do one of my quote art thingys.


As the Fed continues to cross "traditional boundaries" in providing liquidity to various corners of the credit markets, Yellen said she was "absolutely open" to the idea of the central bank buying long-term Treasuries if it would help the overall functioning of the credit market.
Meanwhile, Yellen told reporters the Fed needed to fight back against the notion that its liquidity efforts would inevitably lead to higher inflation and higher interest rates, terming the notion "ludicrous."


Fed's Yellen sees dynamics similar to Depression | Reuters



Bank of America Corp. (BAC) (BAC) Chief Executive Ken Lewis capped off a week of defending his bank and his role in it on Friday by firing back against rumors that his company could be in danger of nationalization.
"It's absurd," Lewis said in an interview on CNBC, adding that he knows of no government officials who have talked about nationalizing the bank.




My Way News - BofA CEO Lewis says nationalization is 'absurd'