The $825B & $447B Economic Stimulus Packages

[jimzinsocal]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/35438c54-e...nclick_check=1

[Dutchcedar]

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the cost to repair our roads, highways and bridges will cost about $2.2 trillion.

An analysis of this urgent "stimulus" plan by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that less than half of the $30 billion in highway construction money would be released into the economy over the next four years.

The CBO also found that only $26 billion of $274 billion in infrastructure spending would be used by next fall. Only 64 percent of the entire stimulus would reach the economy by 2011.

Keep in mind that infrastructure spending is not necessarily roads, highways and bridges...

I bring this up because this morning I listened to a report on the $1.2 trillion $825 billion spend-a-thon stimulus plan and it was touting this road repair as a huge part of it. Not true.

I don't know about the rest of you, but this quick sell crap we're being forced to swallow by our representatives in Washington is getting ridiculous.

If there's such an emergency, why not write a bill to cover the emergency, instead of larding it up to be a spend-a-thon that covers a decade or more?

[tucker]

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the cost to repair our roads, highways and bridges will cost about $2.2 trillion.Keep in mind that infrastructure spending is not necessarily roads, highways and bridges...

I bring this up because this morning I listened to a report on the $1.2 trillion $825 billion spend-a-thon stimulus plan and it was touting this road repair as a huge part of it. Not true.

I don't know about the rest of you, but this quick sell crap we're being forced to swallow by our representatives in Washington is getting ridiculous.

If there's such an emergency, why not write a bill to cover the emergency, instead of larding it up to be a spend-a-thon that covers a decade or more?

They want to rush it because they know the more people learn about the package the more they’re going to see it for what it is. A pork filled special interest payback spiced with the usual ultra-liberal big government, big spending socialism.

[AeroSim]

If you don't like what we have so far....

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/firs...osal-stimulus/

[jimzinsocal]

Come on now Dan. Loosen up and tell us how you really feel.
Dont hold back...

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carniv...ld-status.html

[myv65]

While I appreciate what is being said, I'm finding that many economists are focussed on the financial side of the equation and how money should be put from one pocket to another.

Almost none are talking anymore about growing the AMERICAN goods and services that gives U.S. Money value...and outsourcing and production are words that are becoming missing from these discussions. AFAIC many of these discussions are talking Vapor Bucks until these issues are addressed directly with a purpose...even with a bone in our teeth.

I am admittedly biased given that the same concept has been rolling around in my head for a while now, but this is a very valid point that is being largely (entirely?) ignored by our politicians, media, and population in general.

We had a long run upward in the overall economy driven by uphoria as much or more than fundamentals. Now we're seeing pessimism every bit as over-promoted by our politicians and media, and in many cases as unfounded as the previous exhiliration that preceded it.

From the most cosmically distant perspective, our "economy" is little more than # people working * average output per person. The devil is in the details of how that overall economic pie gets split, how individuals handle money and credit, the influence (intended and otherwise) of government decisions on business actions, etc.

It strikes me that we brought about a world of unrealistic and unfounded expectations. People bought more house, car, clothing, vacation, etc than they could afford or could be justified by their own productivity. Average personal savings rate actually went negative, for cryin' out loud.

Given all that, is it really so surprising that so many think government spending will be a magical cure to all that ails us? This whole affair is liable to make the Social Security implosion look like a tiny blip on the radar. . .

[myv65]

If you don't like what we have so far....

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/firs...osal-stimulus/

^^From the above:

"If government spending was going to get us out of this mess, we'd have been out a long time ago, because that's all we've been doing," said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Perhaps the truest statement I've heard from a politician in a while.

[jimzinsocal]

VDH with some thinking. I agree with some parts...

The Hysterical Style [Victor Davis Hanson]

If anyone wished to know what the baby-boomer generation would do when, in its full maturity, it hit its first self-created, big-time recession, I think we are seeing the hysterical results. After two decades of unprecedented economic growth, rampant consumer spending, and unimaginable borrowing to satisfy our insatiable appetites, we are suddenly going into even larger debt and printing trillions of dollars in paper money to ensure that someone else after we are gone pays the debt. As if the permanent solution to a financial panic and years of spending wealth we didn't create were a government take-over of the economy in the manner we currently witness in Spain, Italy, and Greece—or the high-tax, high-spend ethos of a bankrupt California.

The reaction to the economic panic was sort of analogous to the call to 'charge it!' after 9/11 (cf. Ike's fights about the surtax to pay for Korea), or to the Iraq 2006 upsurge in violence, when suddenly our leaders declared the war lost, blamed the nebulous "they" for tricking them into voting for the war, and calling for immediate withdrawals and retreats. Ditto the Stalag-Gulag Guantanamo that, by January 19, had ruined the Constitution, shredded the Bill of Rights, and forever tarnished our reputation. Yet, on the 20th, it was suddenly complex and problematic, and required a "task force" to do a year-long inquiry into the bad and worse choices confronting us. At some point in all this serial hysteria, we are beginning to see the problem is not in the stars of the economy or of the war, but in ourselves—a weird generation that, when it finally came of age, proved to be just about what we could expect of it from what we saw in its youth.

[AMDScooter]

Pucker up and get ready to eat a 1.2 Trillion dollar crap sandwich America.

A 40-Year Wish List
You won't believe what's in that stimulus bill.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."
So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart. The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation is being sold as an economic "stimulus," but now that Democrats have finally released the details we understand Rahm's point much better. This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.

We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.

. . .

[jimzinsocal]

Among my favorites: New chariots for our Federal Royalty

Here's another lu-lu: Congress wants to spend $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles

[AeroSim]

....

If anyone wished to know what the baby-boomer generation would do when, in its full maturity, it hit its first self-created, big-time recession, I think we are seeing the hysterical results. After two decades of unprecedented economic growth, rampant consumer spending, and unimaginable borrowing to satisfy our insatiable appetites, we are suddenly going into even larger debt and printing trillions of dollars in paper money to ensure that someone else after we are gone pays the debt. As if the permanent solution to a financial panic and years of spending wealth we didn't create were a government take-over of the economy in the manner we currently witness in Spain, Italy, and Greece—or the high-tax, high-spend ethos of a bankrupt California.
....

A couple of decent links, jimz (this and the Riehl).

You mentioned in another thread that good banking people outnumber bad by 10,000:1. While I get the idea, I think we both know that in reality, this is not the case. Moreover, bailout bills have a side effect that that have a tendency to worsen that leverage. And a decent chunk of this bill is exactly a bailout. Bailouts tend to help the rats nest longer and multiply.

I work for a business that margins 4-10% profit and hasn't missed a dividend in over 20 years. It produces products with capital asset and collateral value from autoparts to aircraft engines and I have seen some of the most wonderful and remarkable things during my career. I'm an engineer, not an economic, financial or market wizard.

When I hear of money games that leverage out $9 of profit for every $1 risked in hedge funds or of miracle money being made in short-sells, I have to suspect that the money we earned has been given to someone who has the permission to take it to essentially a craps-shoot. And some rat(s) swindled people to make it happen during our good times economy.

Then when the bad-times economy hits...these people should be indicted or shaken from the trees, but instead they now can get the government to underwrite their losses, hide their failures, and have a system of running naked shorts in place to capitalize on eveyone else's misery. And that's only one part of it (I'll leave out the others for now).

Meanwhile, the tax-payer- whose retirement/savings account has already taken it in the shorts, is now saddled with a tax burden to build a road to a job he may no longer have. We have already moved $350B to bankers whose best face forward is to lend it back to us...if they haven't already partied it down.

Why am I not looking at futures in the Federal penal system?

I'm sorry if I sound like the eternal pessimist- but without correction, this system looks to choke on its own consumption and these bills look to be political kickbacks. I'm almost done with this review and it is very similar to TARP in this regard. There is almost nothing in there that could not have been handled or addressed by the current budget process.

We need to kill this bill.

[jimzinsocal]

Agree. I know where you are coming from.
Oh. I wasnt talking about bankers specifically.
Less specific. "Business" people/owners in general.
What I meant.
Bankers are about at the level of lawyers IMO.
Cut out their tongues and remove their typing fingers?
Theyd be cleaning windshields at the Lincoln Tunnel.

[myv65]

I'm an engineer, not an economic, financial or market wizard.

LOL, another engineer. Well, that 'splains a lot. An ME by chance?

[jimzinsocal]

Democrats are celebrating...
House Democrats Rally Ahead of Vote on Stimulus Package

[AMDScooter]

Democrats are celebrating...
House Democrats Rally Ahead of Vote on Stimulus Package

Good for them.. hopefully the conservatives will do the right thing and let them own this "crap sandwich stimulus" lock.. stock & barrel.