Some questions /comments on the stimulus bill.

It is my understanding that the stimulus bill was mostly designed as an emergency measure to give us 6-12 months breathing space until the effect of real economic reforms such as universal health care and energy Independence programs could start kicking in. It this right?

If the stimulus was an emergency measure, why are so many people bitching because the money is largely going to keeping teachers and police officers working, to extending unemployment benefits and to shoring up other social safety net programs? Spending on infrastructure is important in its own right, but as an emergency measure is generally too slow and involves too few people, IMO.

ANOTHER $100 Billion for the IMF, $85 Billion more for war in the latest "Emergency" spending bill, btw...

prevent a total collapse.

Let me offer a metaphor: the flat roof on my house keeps developing leaks. We don't have the money right now to replace the roof with a proper peaked roof, so we keep pouring time and money into patching the existing roof. If we didn't patch the flat roof we want to get rid of, the entire house would be ruined.

In other words, dumping all that money into the international banking system now may be the only way to get the breathing space to come back and reform the entire mess.


On edit: sometimes you have to take care of the alligators before you can get around to draining the swamp. The tricky part is not to get so involved fighting off the alligators that you forget the original goal was to drain the swamp!

I guess this isn't exactly an original thought:

from the middle class to the foreign business interests in the history of the US to make their case, no?

"Let me offer a metaphor: the flat roof on my house keeps developing leaks."

The metaphor most often offered for such economic policies in which government support of the wealthy is said to eventually work its way to the common person ("trickle down economics") is a boat. If the boat is taking on water, I'm not sure the roof is my first concern...

money to the people who caused the problem, but that if he didn't give them the money, there was a risk of catastrophic collapse. Industrial orders are down worldwide, but at least most companies are hunkered down waiting to ride this out. Without the transfer of the money, how many plants would have just locked their gates and laid everyone off?

Well, you don't see any tigers around here, do you??? Just imagine how many tigers you would see if I weren't holding this rock!!!

everything came to a screeching halt a few months back. The saddest story I heard was of a plant that had been in poor shape for years. They were under deadline, shape up or you'll be closed. Some new managers came in, people finally got the message and they turned the plant around. The problem was, that by the time they turned around, product demand was down so much that the parent company had no cash to keep them open.

Orders and expansion projects are all canceled or on hold while everyone waits to see what happens next. Some of it is due to a lack of investment cash, some of it is due to a fear of what happens next. Things aren't great, but at least we didn't go over a cliff.

keep us from falling into a depression.

In theory, the same amount of expected drop in GDP is supposed to be that which is spent publicly to combat deficient demand.

If this money is spent effectively, there would be relatively few net job losses.

You can consider it an emergency bill if you want, but it never needed to be a temporary measure to restart the economy. If done properly, the stimulus would of maintained and increase production while the private market sorted itself out. What makes it an "emergency", temporary bill is the fact that it is not substantially working. This is a revisionist re-framing of a failure as a success.