Dear friends,
It seems to me that One reason the stimulus is working so poorly is that it was hastily crafted and inadequately thought out.
The stories about the abuses, fraud, and outright idiocy about the $787 billion dollar stimulus package are everywhere… except the big four unbiased outlets, i.e., CNN, CBS, NBC incarnates, and ABC.
Fictitious zip codes are turning up with that have received billions of dollars. One here for example;
There is a more fundamental reason the stimulus didn’t and will not work and that is, that government didn’t earn the money it gave away. Government will take the money, and the interest, at gun point, from us our children and our grand children. Even if the money had all been spent, as it supposedly should have, it would have a negative effect on the overall economy. Government is pulling future economic growth to the present and trying to have it today. But the interest is never factored in. No matter what if the money is not invested properly it will be exhausted by cost of the loan. But the point of a stimulus is to keep demand up until the private sector steps in to pick up the slack.
But if the private sector is denuded of capital it can never step back in. A sufficiently high stimulus will necessarily demand a very high tax burden from the people and business. Because government never earns money it can only takes it from the people and business. So as the private sector is deprived of capital by ever more punitive taxation it must lower it’s payroll and investment in infrastructure. This necessarily lowers demand for labor and wages. Making it ever more difficult for the private sector to step back in.
As demand is driven more and more by government supply will align itself to the demand. Suppliers will gear their business to government demands and requirements. Further diminishing the private sector’s ability to react to market opportunities. Demand shapes supply.
So now we have, if not outright corruption, incompetence in the writing and execution of the stimulus. Costing us and future taxpayers tens of billions of dollars… with interest. A stimulus that is fundamentally flawed in it’s very concept. Making the whole exercise a theater of the absurd. In an honest and sane world spot lights would be shining on government’s folly.
The biggest thing the administration has going for it is the slavish media. There are reports that some in the media are taking orders directly from the White House… while on the air. In fact NPR has editorialists calling for the unbiased media to toss out all semblance of fairness. The administration has at least that ace in it’s back pocket, to redirect anger about the results of it‘s policies, away from itself.
Empirically however… The economy is still shedding jobs. (But at a reduced rate…) economic figures are all over the board. The brains behind the curtains are trying to make people think they know what is going on but they are as clueless to it… as a coal miner to the weather. Otherwise, they know we are sliding into a depression, and want to hide the fact from the people. The currency markets are a good sign that no one knows what is happening to the economy. The dollar will slide to a decade low then back to a high. The Yen / Australian dollar ratio is diminishing in value and brainiacs are struggling to find something efficient to replace it. What about us?
We are still in the lurch. The government has thrown almost three trillion dollars down a rabbit hole. Money that we people have yet to earn. Government’s spending has indebted the citizens of the US to the world for generations. Government policies have dried up loans for small business. They ordered banks to channele to ACORN instead of SBA loans. All this proving… elections matter. Hopefully the American people will be a little more wise about who they put into office in the future.
Unfortunately it’s too late. WE are in a depression… of the government’s making.
