Posted on 01/20/2008 8:24:06 AM PST by fweingart
Uncle Sam wants you - to shop! It's official. The great minds of the United States of America, the world's lone superpower and an emerging economic basket case, have a plan to fix what ails our sagging economy.
In a nutshell, or maybe in a nuthouse, the best and the brightest have decided to give us a fistful of dollars, on one condition: That we spend them all lickety-split. No savings allowed.
If this sounds suspiciously like giving crack to a cocaine addict and hoping for a recovery, then you, too, must be alarmed at the shallowness of thinking about a very deep problem. And not just among the whiz kids in the White House.
The brain lock extends to the campaign trail, where those who want to sit in the Oval Office have produced carbon copies of the Retail Therapy prescription. Feeble is as feeble does.
Who can blame them? Sen. John McCain tried straight talk in Michigan and got the express boot out of the state when he said lost manufacturing jobs weren't coming back. They are coming back, insisted Mitt Romney, who was promptly rewarded for this fairy tale by winning the state's GOP primary. Lesson learned: Tell 'em what they want to hear, not the truth. McCain, no dummy, put out his own giveaway package days later.
These stimulus plans are the performance-enhancing drugs of politics. Just like steroids, they exact a terrible price over the long term.
So what if we have surging debts and deficits. So what if bankruptcies and foreclosures are up. So what if middle-class incomes are stagnant and unemployment is rising. So what if entitlement programs are threatening to swallow every dollar we print, and then some. So what if your house, if it is still your house, is worth half of what it was last year. And so what if your pension is vanishing as the bottom falls out of the stock market.
Just get off your duff, America, and buy something now. The problems won't go away, but you'll have a shiny new snow shovel or a new pair of shoes. And nothing makes a true American feel better than shopping, especially when the government is paying.
If Washington ponies up enough pennies, assuming it actually gets around to ponying up any at all, we can all do what President Bush did last week. He went to Arabia to visit our dollars. Or, more precisely, what our dollars have bought and built for the petrocrats who feed our addiction to oil. It wouldn't be fair to label them dope dealers because we're the dopes.
Raking in about $100 a barrel for their black gold, the Persian Gulf countries can't spend our money fast enough, especially when the value of what we have left to sell keeps falling. They're not just buying our banks and other assets - they're buying them at distressed prices.
The good old greenback ain't what it used to be.
Sen. Hillary Clinton captured the moment when she said Bush's plea to the Saudis to pump more oil so the price would fall was “pathetic.” Leaving aside the inconvenient truth that her Bubba made the exact same plea eight years ago, when oil was a mere $30 a barrel, Clinton was right. Pathetic it is.
It's doubly pathetic to think the price of oil is the only problem. The long-range financial crisis is that we're becoming a hollowed out country standing on the shaky stilts of credit. When something goes wrong - the housing bubble bursts - we look for the quick and easy fix. Almost always it involves spending and borrowing. We borrow from our children, the Chinese, the Arabs, anybody who has a few spare gazillions they got by selling us something we used to make but now can't afford to buy.
Only the government can run a Ponzi scheme this way, but not even the government can get away with it forever.
The Dow Jones industrial average, which has shed 2,000 points since October, is signaling that the end is near.
The White House and the candidates all know this, but it would be bad for their business model if they dared speak the truth. But somebody must say it, so here goes: We, the good people of the good 'ol USA, are on the road to ruin.
Just print more money and give it to the mortgage companies, that should really help. 'SAC OFF"
“...trip to the currency printing press” is more like it.
As if inflation isn’t already bad enough now. Let’s make it worse...
The only time free market capitalism fails is when competition laws are discarded in favor of consolidation. The big corporations that are either failing or taking their profits offshore got big by buying up the competition. The American economy will bounce back strong as soon as congress starts breaking up the big corporations into small competitive companies.
Otherwise, the country will continue leaning further towards socialism and socialism always fails.
We the People are beginning to wake up...we hope.
This became pretty obvious back when someone asked what we ordinary people can do to help fight the war on terrorism, and our modern day Churchill famously responded “go shopping”.
The Asian market jumped on the Stimulus plan. They can see all those funds flowing into the Big Box Stores andstraight to Asia in exchange for little plastic boxes of junk.
This is the dumbest thing that DC could do to solve our problems..but all those drones will love their new X Boxes, Sony’s and laptops.
Don’t count on it.
This is ridiulous!
It feeds the attitude of SPEND,SPEND SPEND even though you can’t afford it. When the bills rol in again nothing will have changed - the problem will be worse.
Indeed - INFLATION will be worse.
This is sooooooooooo stupid.
What a great article. He covers everything and gets it right. Too bad he isn’t in Washington.
People spent beyond their means and finally had to reel in their own personal spending. Now gov’t wants to give them $800 to go spend again, even if only briefly. BTW, if gov’t can afford to give back a $150 bln, then they had too much of our money to start with.
What's his, or anyone else's, solution?
Consider the Rat Quandry.....what can we bitch about?
With a chicken in every pot and two in the freezer and 10 already cooked at the Walmart entrance, what can we rag on?
When there is a car and a pickup for mom and dad and a car for a kid that is 17 or older, What’s to rag on?
When vacation is a cruise with all you can eat and drink with stop offs in Cancun or Kingstown, what’s there to rag about?
With the main gripe of travelers the time you have to wait in line to go flying somewhere, what’s to rag about?
When gas gets high but is still not killing off the steak dinner out on Friday, whats to rag about.
To cinvince the voters there’s really crisis in the economy....we’ll give them their taxes back and make them think there is trouble.
W smiles and beats the crap out of them with their own stick.
It’s bizarre what’s happened to this administration.
Selling out friends (Serbia - Bolton)...selling of America (China-Saudi Arabia)...selling of ideals (materialism run amuk).
The only lasting good Bush has done is the Supreme Court justices that have been confirmed...it took quite a bit to get the last one, which may be the most we can get for now.
The jury is still out on Iraq...and the war on Islam.
It will all be fine when Apple releases its earnings on Wednesay. People are buying iPods and downloading music, which more than balances out the collapsing financial sector of the country.
That’s what Wall Street wants you to believe.
This will be the Christmas income they missed out on.
Not only that, but Pres. Bush has announced plans for businesses to get some good breaks.
Step in the right direction IMO.
It’s past time to start saving, but this would cause
an initial downturn.
Most of my family will be paying our bills with that money, and if that money is a loan, then im just going to put the money in my savings account and have it build up interest.
With Americans having an average of 8K on their credit cards ... this is not the answer for a long term fix.
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