Posted on 11/23/2008 10:42:40 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Facing an increasingly ominous economic outlook, President-elect Barack Obama and other Democrats are rapidly ratcheting up plans for a massive fiscal stimulus program that could total as much as $700 billion over the next two years.
That amount, more than the nation has spent over the past six years in Iraq, would rival the sum Congress committed last month to rescuing the country's financial system. It would also be one of the biggest public spending programs aimed at jolting the economy since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
Hints of a hefty new spending program began emerging last week. New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D), an Obama adviser, and Harvard economist Lawrence H. Summers, whom Obama has chosen to lead his White House economic team, both raised the possibility of $700 billion in new spending. Yesterday, Obama adviser and former Clinton administration Labor secretary Robert Reich and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) also called for spending in the range of $500 billion to $700 billion.
Transition officials would not confirm that they are considering spending of that magnitude, but they made clear that economic conditions are dire, and suggested that Obama might be forced to delay his pledge to repeal President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Exactly.
That spirit seems to be fading. :-(
Last night Citigroup got bailed out to the tune of 306 Billion.
Hey, if it’s good enough for Wall Street...
Good line. Can I steal it? (or “invest it” in political speak).
Unless Americans are being more productive, more efficient, more innovative, more high-quality, or some other category, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be paid peanuts and live in huts like our competitors.
Bingo. We have a winner. It is actually a bit worse - those few senior managers who make decisions in the big companies found that they could feather their own nests better by eliminating capital investment in the US and making it elsewhere and importing cheap crap to sell to US consumers, who financed it on over-extended credit. This game is almost over because people without jobs and without access to credit can no longer buy the cheap crap.
One ot the big losses in this country is entrepreneurs like George Eastman, who saw his employees also as neighbors and viewed the quality of the products produced by his company as an indicator of his own character. The carpetbaggers who now run the companies founded by Eastman and like-minded men in the previous century are a disgrace to the legacy of their founders.
You got it right!The wonder Fed a misnamed private cartel that looks out only for the global bankers in conjunction with our elected officials. Just wait until the day the dollar really falls out of global favor and all those fraudulent dollars come back to America.
Years and years ago, I worked in a sweet potato cannery on Virginia's Eastern Shore. Due to poor agribusiness practices, sweet potatoes could no longer be grown commercially there, so they were trucked in from the Carolinas, which hadn't been raped quite so badly yet (then). It was going to be the last day at the plant anyway, and they were not planning to reopen the following season, when a conveyor belt broke mid-morning. They blew the whistle after about five minutes of trying to get it fixed, and we all punched out and left the sweet potatoes, cans, and lids just where they were. For all I know they're still there.
More people out of work means less people to spend money, and demand for all products goes done. Demand goes down, prices all goods and services fall again.
Rinse, repeat.
This happens until sometime in the future when there are so few products being made, that the supply equalizes with the demand once again.
By this time the economy has retraced significantly, we have massive unemployment, tax revenues are in the toilet, yet government continues to spend.
We're in one hell of a mess.
We need to let the economy correct itself now when it will be less painful, rather than continue to prop it up with government debt until it's unsustainable and the entire house of cards come crashing down.
Think great depression x 10.
“Cut capital gains taxes to zero, slash corporate income taxes, cut personal income taxes across the board, drastically cut entitlement spending,”
The irony is that if they’d do this, then they wouldn’t have to do this:
“and take a chain saw to the federal budget.”
Why? Because total tax revenues would go through the roof...
drudge now has $7.4 trillion up.
The Washington Post said all of that without using the word "Republicans?" It'a about damn time to hang this economic turkey around the necks of the Democrats.
When the sons of Saddam Hussein tried this with the banks of Iraq, we called it looting.
But didn’t the banks in Iraq ACTUALLY HAVE MONEY IN THEM?!?!?!
This is nuts. It’s like my 8 y/o daughter telling me if I run out of money, all I have to do is go to the ATM and I can get all I want for free!!!! Why all of a sudden is Congress acting like it grew a ‘free’ money tree that will have roots and branches spreading out ALL over America?!?!?!
Yep, if you can get 50% + 1 dependent on Gov’t for their livelihood, then you’ll always be in power.
Democracy = 2 wolves and a lamb deciding on what’s for lunch.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_should_the_government
Hey it is only money.
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