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It’s too simplistic and jaded and cynical to think Bush crashed the economy with his war and other profligate spending just so he can rescue it just in time for the election in November pushing the deficit ever higher which won’t have to be dealt with now. Right? |
Bush outlines $140bn stimulus package
President George W. Bush on Friday outlined a $140bn fiscal stimulus plan involving temporary tax relief for both consumers and companies in a bid to keep the US economy out of recession.
The administration said his plan would create or safeguard half a million jobs at risk from the economic downturn.
[…]
The president said that the package must be “big enough to make a difference in an economy as large and dynamic as ours – which means it should be about one per cent of gross domestic product”.He said it should be “built on broad-based tax relief” and “not the kind of spending projects that would have little immediate impact on our economy”. Mr Bush insisted that it should include “tax incentives for American businesses” as well as “direct and rapid income tax relief for the American people”.
Here’s an editorial by a guy who says Wall Street “drew little comfort from President Bush’s stimulus plan.”
“Roll out the barrel, roll out the barrel of pork!”
Pork barreling – is the American voting public that stoopid?
Americans answer that this November. 😉
Cheers
Why do companies need tax relief? Most don’t pay any to begin with.
This is all election year stimulus that will feel good this year, but in 2009 we will still be post peak oil, and most homeowners will still owe more on their mortgage than their houses are worth.
You’re right we should only tax companies, so tax Target, Walmart, and all those greedy companies. They have plenty of money. And if they need more they’ll just raise prices. That way they can pay their taxes. And regular people never will pay taxes. Oh, wait… as long as you never buy anything. Tax company = higher prices = consumer pays taxes. I guess no matter what you do companies will never pay taxes. I know, buy stuff from other countries. That will teach them!!
Tweaking a system thats broke! I love the statement about spending the money domestically! What exactly do we make in this country anyway?
What better way to cement the death of the dollar, than to have the federal Reserve ‘issue’ 140Bn more? Does anyone else realize that there is INTEREST that is associated with every dollar ‘issued’ by the Private Federal Reserve? And that all this does is increase the debt owed to this private corporation that controls the Publics Monies?
Tax cuts to finance a war.
Makes sense to me.
A failing economy.
A ‘war’ where winning is just not losing.
A neglected infrastructure.
A government in chaos due to mismanagement.
An America that has no respect, or support, or sympathy from the rest of the world.
A Dollar that is worth 1/3 less than before we started.
A population that is subject to less rights and more monitoring and control.
A loss of state rights.
A lack of accountability for those in power.
A debt mountain that we have no idea how to even start to reduce.
A rewriting of the Constitution.
Just give people an $800 check three months before the election and they will forget everything.
And no, it’s not buying votes… it’s “Stimulating the economy”.
Is bn short for billion? I’m no economic analyst or anything, but I’ve never seen that. I’ve seen it like $140b, though. I think that $140 x 10^9 is preferablets.
Oops, did I just say preferablets? That’s a weird typo. I meant preferable.
#8: http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/billion
So it is used, but usual abbreviations are
k = thousand
m = million
b = billion
t = trillion
Lets see…
$140,000,000,000
Take that and divide it into the Poor and lower classes.. 50,000,000 people..
About $2800 per person. And it will probably get Paid into the system, ALMOST instantly. AS RENT in the next 1-4 months.
Give it to the RICH 1%, about 19,000,000, and you get about $7000 per person. 1 days spending of petty cash.
Give it to the Top 500 corps? $280,000,000 each??
I dont think it would pay the rent, for anything, and it wont give any pay increases, except the the CEO. Wont go to stock holders.
So, WHOM do you think its going to??
Oils corps, and Military corps???
I saw give us all a check like they did a few years ago. I could use a few bucks to fix my car. Now Now Now Now go go go mine mine mine
People marginalized as doomsdayers have been screaming about impending implosion of the US economy for some time. Consumer debt, trade deficits, the war, these things are no great surprise to anyone. It is considered to be a major political incorrectness to speak of negative trends in the economy, the publics psyche has been presumed unable to deal with that kind of message in a rational way.
Now that Empress Public will unavoidably be passing in front of a mirror (or for the literati perhaps passing by a young Lou Dobbs), washington public servants are desperately trying to cover her saggy boobs with stimulus. Wait to she sees her fat ankles.
Read Naomi Klein’s “Disaster Capatalism” before you even think about deciding this is a good idea. Unless the money is being used to directly hire people the result will not be “creating jobs”.
Bush & co can be considered to have zero credibility in terms of economic planning and management.
I think they are just trying to THROW all the USA money into the Dumpster..
They are MAKING the value of the dollar, NOTHING.
They did this before, when we were In DEBT, to other nations.
We buy OTHER nations currency at LOW prices, like 0.67(look at canada), then DUMP the USA economy to force Down the Dollar. And the 0.67 is 1.20, we have SAVED 50% of WHAT OTHER NATIONS took as our DEBT.
#12 – Ha! I had the same quote in my head. Any debate regarding money is improved with Daffy Duck.
Back to the discussion – how do the conservatives feel about such a large government intervention? Isn’t that the job of liberals?
Give us money so we can send it to China buying things that used to be made in this country. Good idea…
I read somewhere that the debate was exactly who to give the money to. The consensus seemed to be give it to the poor people who would spend it faster than the rich people. Back in my Navy days some of the crew would gather on the fantail of our destroyer and feed hot sauce laced bread to the sea gulls, and the unfortunate birds would pass it almost instantly, deriving zero nutritional benefit from the bread. Seems like the feds want to feed the people the same way. And like the seagulls, the people keep following the ship, feeding on false promise scraps.
#11 ECA – The money could be spent by everyone buying those iToasters…or something else as useful.
This is the thing – Americans buy so much useless shit! When I visit my folks house it looks like a SkyMall showroom! An just where is all that shit made? Not in the US! Seems funny to see all that USA Patriotic eagle shit made in China – maybe its USA Idiotic eagle shit.
Chinese are very frugal – they buy what they need to live and save until they can. Thats how Chinese can immigrate to the US with nothing and in a few years have the money to buy a house from the money their business made.
Want to give the 140bn to someone who could make the best out of it? Give it to the new immigrants so they can start businesses with the proviso they can’t import. 😉
Cheers
What a hoot. In the desire to somehow blame all the world’s ill on George W., you fail to recognize 2 facts:
– the financial issues roiling the markets was created by the big boys in the markets, Merrill, Morgan Stanley, Citibank, et al. They made crap loans, put a little marketing spin on them and sold them as enhanced yield to all the morans that thought making money in the markets is easy. In other words, you can put makeup on a pig, but at the end of the day, it’s still a pig… Mortgages were made to bad risks, and now they aren’t paying. If anything, Congress needs to be blamed as they encouraged this behavior.
– Welcome to the US version of Japan May of 1989. The US demographics are changing and thus, the values put on the financial markets is changing. We are moving from a group of investors interested in growth, to ones interested in dividends. It took Japan 12-13 years to get over it and finally start to grow again. In these markets, traders make money, brokers make money, buy and hold investors don’t.
Don’t get me wrong, Bush has more than his share of problems. But at least try to understand what the real problems are. In the financial markets, he’s nothing but a waterboy. Just like Big Ben. Best case, they stay out of the way. Worst case, they scare main street into slowing down the economy, and then wall street panics.
If we give people $800, how can we guarantee that it will be spent on something that benefits the local economy, instead of buying more Chinese junk and sending $600 of the $800 straight to China?
#20 Brock – Yes agreed – Bush did not create the problem he was certainly not part of the solution either.
I do like the pig analogy I use it all the time and by the way thats why you have beer. 😉
In seriousness, the problem as you said is all about making money out of nothing at all like the Dire Straights song. All the big boys had an MBA orgy – Merrill, Morgan Stanley, Citibank, et al.
I recall an economics professor using the Jam factory analogy.
There is a successful privately owned Jam factory. Over time they decide to be publicly listed. After some bullish trading the Jam factory tripled in value even though the factory makes the same amount of jam it made before with the same amount of jam in the warehouse – everyone is happy.
This is your pig with make up – the value of the jam factory is only on paper. Everything is fine at the Jam factory until everyone wants their money. Simplistic I know.
Real value is not in clever accounting and financial loopholes by the pointy haired bosses – but in manufacturing of real products.
Countries are like companies and like all companies they need to operate at a real not paper profit or they eventually fail. The clever accounting and loopholes are usefull only to buy some time to recover from a problem and not to become modus operandi.
Long term – the US will need to correct its current account deficit – less imports more exports – thats it.
Every year the US waits for Christmas to see how much Americans will spend as an indicator on the health of the economy. If more is spent than last year the economy is good. How idiotic! This only deepens the problem as there is more spending on imported goods and in many cases bought on credit!! Doh!
http://tinyurl.com/23mfht
This means less credit/money available to Americans buying all the ‘SkyMall’ junk – or tax the shit out of it. A radical life style change, yes, but how else is there to curb buying of imports?
Other than that the US needs to export more…
What does the US make well that it can export? Things that blow other things up comes to mind. However the idea is not to ‘sell’ it to ourselves but sell to others. We should of been clever enough to get some other country to “free” Iraq and sell them all the stuff to do it with. Doh!
Well that was my rant… 😉
Cheers
Anybody remember the WIN “whip inflation now” govement sent me 50$. Most people I knew back then bought a bag with it and life was good.
I do.