Joshua G

My local paper has the following:

Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell has earmarked $600,000 in federal stimulus money to put "high visibility" markings on State Police cars in the name of trooper safety.

What a fucking joke this Stimulus bill was. The money is not stimulating JACK SHIT.

Between Obama's bailout, which only stimulates bankers pockets who created the problem, & the pork fest that is the "stimulus" Don't look for an economic recovery anytime soon. The money is not ending up in consumer hands.

You Obama whores will soon see the chickens come home to roost.

Snake Doctor

Yes because the 0.00000001% of the stimulus bill that represents is going to make all of the difference.

Plus, the people who make or sell the markings (or paint them on, or however they're done)....those people don't need jobs.

Keynes said in a time of recession, the government should pay one group of people to dig holes, and another group of people to fill them up.
Keynes is possibly the greatest economist who ever lived. Revered by both liberal and conservative economists today.

So unless you can find spending that's more wasteful than digging holes and then filling them back up, I don't want to hear your fucking boo-hooing.

Obama won, live with it. I just got done living with the last guy for 8 years, now it's your turn.

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Joshua G

$600 grand for fucking STICKERS? what exactly are you defending...

its great that the sticker industry will see a temporary bump in business. But that leaves it unclear how that will lift the federal economy.

i won't defend that last 8 years, but the stimulus is nothing but a trillion dollar fraud, far greater in scale than all the corruption found in Iraq.

collegeboobies

yeah its lame

Snake Doctor

Pretty much everything the government spends money on will seem silly compared to the average family budget. Considering that 300 million + of the richest people in the world are buying these things collectively.

People don't seem to mind billions on this and trillions on that, because they can't really understand those numbers....but 600K to mark police cars...when that's like 12 years worth of a 50K/yr job....that pisses people off for some reason.

I imagine if we found out what the commerce department spends on toner or the state department spends on paper clips we could get all worked up about it too....but it's a red herring.

You would be pissed off about the stimulus even if you hadn't read this article in the local paper.

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Joshua G

wrong. you make assumptions about my thinking. if the stimulus was cutting checks to consumers, i would support it. But it only sends money to whatever governments want to spend it on. & guess what - some states are finding they don't have any urgent need for the money, so they put it into 10 cent stickers on police cars. Are you so angry at my politics you need to defend $600 grand to spend on stickers? Its not a red herring. its an example that the money is not going to stimulate the economy, because its being directed at things that will not stimulate the economy.

Snake Doctor

What you fail to understand is that spending money on ANYTHING stimulates the economy.

Just because you don't like what it's being spent on, doesn't make it less stimulative.

If we cut checks to people and they spent the money going to a Star Trek convention or on Fleshlights, I would think that's a fucking waste, because it's not what I would spend it on....but that doesn't mean it didn't stimulate the economy.

This is what people (read: republicans) do once they've lost the overall argument on principle...they want to argue over minutiae because that's the only argument they can win.
Somehow I don't think the American public is going to fall for the "let's cut taxes for the rich because it'll help the economy" thing again....but you can get them riled up about 600K on stickers, so that's what you gotta do to stay relevant.

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Joshua G

its clear you are preoccupied with my right wing slant & not with what i am saying.

i'm not defending 8 years, not shilling for tax cuts for the wealthy.

No, spending money on "anything" does not "all" stimulate the economy. There are different multiplier effects. The wealth created by private sector spending is much greater than spending done by the government. You can find this in any college economics text that discusses public versus private allocations of wealth. So a stimulus bill that cuts checks to all consumers will have a much greater effect on economic growth than checks cut to a handful of corporations in bed with the government.

Anyway nothing you said refutes my point. There is no excuse for spending $600K on stickers. This should be a non partisan concept.

MrMaxwell

Fuck the stimulus package. All along I've said, look, I don't want it. I only am going after it because every one else is taking it. So fuck it. I will, too!

pamon

lots of stuff in these stimulus packages are bogus. lots of BS earmarks and such.

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Snake Doctor

A dollar spent is a dollar spent, period.

Please show me this college text that says otherwise.

Should be easy to find since you say it can be found in "any college economics text"


People get into this public vs private thing as if they are entities with their own minds. It's just a group of people making decisions. The idea that the average person working for a private company is X times smarter than a person working for the government is ludicrous.

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Snake Doctor

BTW....you can't say
"You Obama whores will soon see the chickens come home to roost"

and then talk about being "non partisan"

Hell, sounds to me like the local government got to decide what to do with the money instead of the feds. Isn't that exactly what you guys want?
Or do you only want the states to decide when you agree with what they decide?

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Joshua G

you should easily understand this yourself. After all, free market economies are much wealthier than communist economies. I assume you are smart enough to understand why.

Joshua G

It will come home to roost, in 3 years when the governent spent 3 trillion on bailouts & stimuli & the economy is still in the shitter.

& as a libertarian, i would prefer there were no bailouts at all. They interfere with market mechanisms that scrub poorly managed businesses out of our economy. GM is supposed to fail. They earned it. The workers didn't, but the leadership failed. Thats why they are begging the government to save their asses.

onwebcam

They just want you looking at the small things so you not looking at this

Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...efer=worldwide


Nearly the GDP of the entire US for a year they've spent in 6 months. As much or near enough to pay of EVERY mortgage in the entire US.

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Joshua G

not exactly. the feds have spent only 4 trillion of nearly 13 trillion in guarantees. The 13 trillion may or may not eventually be spent.

either way, the next 4 years will be the grande test of keynsian philosophy AKA can a government spend a country into recovery? Since the bailout is repaying the losses of wealthy bankers, instead of helping the people who got laid off because of the bankers behavior, my prediction is trillions have been spent with no benefit to the economy at all. Snake Doctor would probably agree that trickle down economics is a fraud, & it is. The bailout money is not going to reach consumers, so you can forget any recovery based off either the bailouts or the stimulus.

Splum

The Democrats are buying votes, just like they always do, this time it may destroy this country tho.

Joshua G

bottom line, i think all the bailouts & stimulus is the greatest robbery of this nations wealth in american history. reverse peter pan - the poor taxpayer foots the bill to ensure the evil bankers stay rich.

i'll shut up now.

Bill8

So your lameass governor wants to slide some slush to his fucking cops, and you're all whiney girl boohoohoo over obama?

You're a typical republican idiot. Shirking responsibility and crying like a slapped loser bitch.

Instead of complaining to people who could get them to spend it on your fucking whining ass, you cry on gfy.

If obama was all fucking "WE WILL MAKE YOU ACCOUNT FOR EVERY CENT" to your stupid shit governor, your cryvbaby kind would be all "boohoo obama's too strict he's a fascist now".

teomaxxx

i agree with you and apparently a lot of "old-ex big somethings" agrees with us.
one sample

Babaganoosh

Okay, Republitards. It's time to learn something. Pay attention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gen...st_and_Mon ey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

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kane

So I guess there are questions that need to be asked. First is how many cars will be getting these stickers? If it is 100 cars that is outrageous. If it is 5,000 cars that is like $120 per car which isn't that bad.

Second, who is making/applying these stickers? If they are hiring a private company to make these and/or apply them then that money goes right into the private sector's hands and that company will pay its employees and they will buy groceries and clothes and they will buy TVs and whatever and spending that money helps to stimulate the economy. If they are buying the decals from a Chinese company and applying themselves it doesn't do much.

So there needs to be more info before you can fully decide if it is really stimulus or not.

kane

At this point we basically had two choices.

Option #1: Just let it all crash and burn. Give money to nobody and let those that will go under burn. The plus of this is that we don't spend any tax dollars. The downside is that when AIG went down it would take most of wall street and a huge number of the banks in this country with it. Without those banks businesses would be going under. Unemployment would skyrocket and what would happen? We could easily be looking at 30%+ unemployment and a full blow depression that could take years and years to crawl out of with millions of Americans loosing everything they have so when/if the economy recovers it would take years more for them to get back what they just lost. Mind you most of the people who would suffer during this had nothing to do with the downfall and are guilty of nothing more than going to work and living a reasonable life.

Option #2: Spend a bunch of money in hopes you can put money into the economy, create jobs and hold things over while the private sector recovers in hopes that in a few years the private sector would be creating more jobs and those working stimulus jobs could transition to the private sector. This wards off a huge crash and eventually helps the economy recover. The downside is that it will be very expensive, could fail and if it works eventually the bills will come due.

Neither option is good. It is choosing between shit and green shit. I'm not saying that the stimulus plan is perfect, I don't think it is and I think it could be much better, but I would rather we try then just let thing collapse and hope for the best.

The Truth Hurts

even the cops think its a 'silly' waste of money.
and apparently there's only like 700 state police cars... that have never (in 106 years) had markings. and markings cost $125 per car... so wheres the other 500k+ going?

Pleasurepays

well yeah... now is certainly the time to bitch about it. too bad no one was interested in debating it before it passed through the house and senate.

Pleasurepays

how about this.... odd idea. that a bill actually be debated before it passes the house and senate. that people have time to see whats in it and understand it and understand how money is being spent?

why is that unreasonable?


this is nothing more than a roll of the dice that has NEVER worked for any nation, at any point in history.

instead of touting potential benefits... we should have been weighing the risks.. hyperinflation, worthless currency and worsening economic problems on top of those that existed.

Seriously though.. I like Obama... never let a crisis go to waste. They didn't. They masterfully used the situation to push through exactly what they wanted with little opposition or discussion and dismissed any attempt at debate as "obstructionism". They knew what they could get away with and they went for it. And Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for creating the conditions that made that possible.

Snake Doctor

The bottom line is, you can't complain about two contradictory things.

Every day there are republican talking heads on TV complaining that X% of the stimulus money isn't being spent this year, it's being spent next year.

Then there are also republican talking heads on TV talking about all the wasteful spending (BTW wasteful just means spending I don't agree with...these guys have never seen a wasteful military base)

You can't have it both ways. You can't get all the money out the door yesterday to stimulate the economy AND also spend 6 months debating where every dollar goes.

Whether you like it or not, money spent anywhere in the economy does in fact stimulate the economy. If you gave direct tax rebates to consumers, alot of them would spend it on stupid shit too. That would still stimulate the economy.

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Snake Doctor

You obviously aren't smart enough to understand that there may be other reasons for a nation's prosperity other than the old capitalist/socialist argument.
There are lots of economies out there that tried to do it our way and are worse off now than they were before. Just because it appears to have worked here doesn't mean it's the be all end all of economic theory.

Yeah I'm sure our climate, arable land, vast natural resources, and the fact that our infrastructure was left intact during WWII while most of the "communist" or "soon to be communist" countries were reduced to a pile of rubble has nothing to do with our prosperity since the 1940's.
It's all just because of capitalism.

Yeah, ok.

Don't confuse bank bailouts and the interconnectedness of the international money markets with Keynesian economics.
The stimulus bill was Keynesian. The other stuff (which was mostly done by the Bush administration btw) is totally different and unprecedented as far as I know.

It remains to be seen whether we'll get back all or most of the money that was used to prop up the system so that it could be deleveraged in an orderly fashion.
If the other option was to let Lehman happen all over again, times 10, then obviously this was the right thing to do.
We're in uncharted territory here though, and for either of us to pretend that we know exactly what's going to happen now is ridiculous.

Remember though that these are guarantees or loans, not direct spending, so don't lump them all together with the stimulus bill and act like they're the same thing because they're not.

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Pleasurepays

Why 6 months? Why not a week? There was no discussion or debate on the stimulus plan at all. In fact, everyone voted on it without even reading it. That's not defensible behavior for anyone in government... particularly after they went through the fiasco in changing directions with the TARP money which basically did absolutely nothing as banks just sat on it.

Money spent anywhere stimulates the economy? Thats the rationalization for funding everyone's pet projects?

If that was true, we could just spend our way to wealth and prosperity right? We should never stop spending.

Whether you like it or not... this spending comes with consequences. Thats why we don't just spend money to make ourselves successful.

Snake Doctor

You're trying to take the logic behind a one off spending bill with a specific purpose, and make it seem like that's what I want for all government spending all the time.

That's not true.

You and I aren't going to agree on pretty much anything, so let's not have the same argument for the 50th time...we both know where the other stands.

I just wanted to point out that you can't extrapolate what I said about this one thing to cover all government spending all the time.
I'm in favor of rigorous debate, I engage in it all the time
I'm against earmarks, I think spending should go through the committee process and projects should stand on their own merit, and not on how powerful the congressman from that district is.
That being said, this was a one time thing that would have been done no matter who won in November. If republicans had won, the money would have been spent on different things (tax cuts anyone?), but our balance sheet would still look the same.


P.S. - I agree with you on the TARP thing. You can't ask congress for money to do a specific thing, and then at the last minute slip in a provision that says SecTreas can do basically anything he wants with the money.

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IllTestYourGirls

It is retarded to think that spending money anywhere will stimulate the economy. Things like inflation Keynesian retards like to gloss over.

If I spend $100 building something in six months that will cost $500 a year to maintain how did that stimulate the economy without creating inflation? Where does that extra $500 a year come from?

If spending money just to spend money worked why are we in this mess now? I mean the banks were giving out loans like candy. The Bush government was on over drive when it came to spending?

Keynesian economics has failed, fiat money has failed, the federal reserve has failed.

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Chicago Tribune, 1934

USUALENT

the economy is fucked.. the top are just getting what it can now..

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kane

I never said it was unreasonable. I have said all along the stimulus bill should have been better presented. There should have been more debate and it should have looked at much closer.


You are right, it is a roll of the dice. So is letting it crash. We can't predict for certain the exact effects either would have had. Many experts say we were on the verge of financial collapse before the first round of bailouts started. I'm no economist, but that doesn't sound pleasant. Maybe it wouldn't have been as bad as it sounds. Maybe it would have been worse.

Either way it is a roll of the dice. Roll #1 - let is crash and burn and gamble that we would make a swift recovery and not be marred in a decade long depression. Roll #2 - spend a bunch of money and gamble that we ward off a depression, but risk high inflation, lower currency values and potentially have it all maybe not work and we collapse either way.

Neither sounds very appetizing.

Pleasurepays

I agree with this completely. I don't object to the idea of injecting cash into the system in some form. I object to the notion that its a slam dunk and "the only right thing to do". I don't think thats fair to the people who are going to have to pay for it, to not be fully aware of the risks. I think the entire country was done a tremendous disservice considering the manner in which this was done.

but recessions happen. it will happen no matter what. it would have happened no matter what. faster economic growth will result in a bigger contraction. rebounding will happen no matter what. Just as we are seeing signs of improvement right now, without the effect of the stimulus package. So you can argue that it will "crash and burn" - but you can't argue that recovery isn't inevitable.



i'm a very pragmatic person. I look at this situation and see a nation full of retards who pull out a credit card and borrow money from a bank to buy a Pepsi. I see a nation full of people who are in debt. who are over extended. who are in homes they can't afford and driving cars they have no right to drive. i see a banking system that adapted quite well to making horrible loans and selling them to investors. i see mortgage companies that had no problems whatsoever lying on loan aps (i could tell you stories you wouldn't believe)... i see a system that failed completely from top to bottom. from consumers to lenders to investors.

my view is that crashing and burning makes everything stronger in the end. everyone learns the lessons. everyone resets. everyone realizes how retarded they are acting, realizes there are consequences to being stupid and making poor financial decisions. my view is that pumping the system and these companies and tax payers full of money, blaming bush and doing it at the expense of those who acted responsibly, is a horrible message to send... and its a message that will only serve to hasten the next great financial collapse.

kane

I agree 100%


Again this is true. Recessions always happen and typically the larger the growth period the bigger the recession. I also agree that recovery will eventually happen, but my question is how long will it take and what will be the cost of it? Will it happen fast and rebound strongly, quickly or will it take 10 years and have millions lose everything they have in the wake?





I have said for a long time that the number one problem this country has in entitlement. People feel they are entitled to everything. They think that if they want a big house they "deserve" it. They think if they want an expensive car they should have it. I know people who make a nice living and they spend every penny they make and are actually over their limit in credit. They have bills they only pay every other month because they have more going out each month than coming in. A friend of mine asked me to sit down with he and his wife and help them with a budget ( I like finance stuff so my friends are always asking me questions). He makes around 80K a year and has two kids so they should be doing pretty well. He has no savings. Every dime that comes in goes out. So we make a list of every expense they have and he is spending $165 a month on cable TV and another $70 a month on internet access. They have 8 different credit cards all maxed out and when I asked what they had bought with them the only thing that they could remember was their big screen TV. So out of around 15K in credit card debt they spent $1500 on a TV and can't even remember where the rest went. They spend about $200 a month on cell phones.

I cut and slashed and they said they would think about it, but I don't think they will do anything about it because they feel entitled to 300 channels of TV and the fastest internet access you can get and they like having the top of the line cell phone plan so they can surf the web on their phone and send a million texts a month if they want (even though they hardly ever use those features). They like being able to tell people that is what they have and they like putting on the facade of someone living well when in reality they are teetering on bankruptcy.

So I can really understand where you are coming from. My worry is that regardless of how this situation gets solved we won't learn our lesson. People are watching their money right now, but in a few years if all is good again they will go right back to spending as they were before. What bothers me the most is that if things just crashed and burned and there were no stimulus package at all millions would suffer who had nothing to do with causing the problem. I understand that part of living in this country, or any capitalist type of economy, is that there is a risk that you will lose what you have. I just pisses me off that I watch my money closely and live well below my means and in the end I may suffer because of the actions of some other jackasses. It pisses me off that good people may suffer badly from this and those that caused it may not even learn their lesson.

Xxaru Media

Why doesn't the govt just put 10grand in everyones pocket who pays their taxes this year? That aught to stimulate the fucking economy.

pornguy

I agree that seems like a bit much, but in the long run that money will go further than giving it to AIG to sit on.

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