Second stimulus package

[Postul8]

The first bonus is still delivering. Note the number of new fulltime jobs last month.

Again, the choice is not between a stimulus and no stimulus. The choice is between spending the stimulus money over 3 years OR 3 years of ever increasing unemployment, and the rapidly growing social security payments. Which leads to a bigger deficit?

And this one is not just handouts! There is the quick small infrastructure spending, esp on schools! Bigger infrastructure to come.

I'm all in favour of Keynesianism when its necessary, but I don't agree that cash handouts will prove to be any form of panacea. At least with the recently passed $42b package, handouts are much better targeted and more likely to be spent, generating some level of impetus in the cash economy. Mum's spending their $950 per sprog on a new computer/digital TV/shit-box car isn't going to spark new jobs though. With any luck, that sort of spending might help reduce layoffs and redundancies but it's very short term. The real guts of the package - infrastructure spending - is vital both now, for job creation and into the future in preparation for the exit from this veil of economic woes. I'm disappointed that absolutely no attention has been paid to unemployment support. Anyone who's had to run the gamut of the Centrelink process knows just how hard it is, and how little benefit it delivers. Supporting those who lose their employment because of the downturn is equally as important as handing out cash to Yummy-Mummies to preserve jobs in my view.

[AiA in Atlanta]

One of the problems with the Obama plan to get out of the crises might be instructive to us should our banks start to go down as well.

He wants to inject cash into the banks, improve their balance sheet in the hopes that this will see a kick start in lending once again as it will offset their toxic securities holdings.

I think a better idea would be to do what the Regan Administration did during the Savings and Loans crises, actually use the cash to buy any failing bank, strip the toxic assets out and either eliminate them (yes many funds would take a loss, but they are already) or restructure the terms (for instance give sub prime mortgage holders new terms they can pay, thereby stabilizing confidence in the securities long term viability) and then re-sell the now healthy banks back to the private sector.

The Reagan administration actually turned a profit for the US taxpayer by doing this in the long term.

28 years of Reaganomics and nothing to show for it except the Monk's pot roast.

[JW Frogen]

Reagan created more jobs than Obama is likely to with the stimulus plan and yet was not foolish enough to deregulate the financial banking sector so that commercial banking and securities would be intertwined in a financial dance of death and destruction.

That honour goes to Slick Willy.

[AiA in Atlanta]

Reagan created more jobs than Obama is likely to with the stimulus plan and yet was not foolish enough to deregulate the financial banking sector so that commercial banking and securities would be intertwined in a financial dance of death and destruction.

That honour goes to Slick Willy.

Instead of "tax and spend" Reagan was "borrow and spend."

The $1 trillion national debt that existed in 1981 represented the cumulative deficit spending of all previous presidents from George Washington through Jimmy Carter. That debt was doubled to $2 trillion in just 5 years, and it was quadrupled to $4 trillion by the time George H.W. Bush left office in 1993. Between 1981 and 1986 the United States was transformed from the world’s largest lender to the world’s largest borrower, and by 2008, the national debt reached $10 trillion.

[Postul8]

Reagan wasn't faced with national bankruptcy

[AiA in Atlanta]

Reagan wasn't faced with national bankruptcy

What would Reagan do? Raise taxes like Arnold Schwarzenegger has just done in CA I imagine. What do you think Frogen?

[JW Frogen]

He was not as concerned with deficits as he was the permanent size and growth of government believing that deficits would make it impossible to grow the government more in the future (wrongly) and that tax cuts would produce dramatic economic growth, rightly.

Still, as with the Savings and Loans crises he would use government to intervene in the markets during a market failure, in the short term

I think he would cut taxes to business, in particular small business, and cut taxes on investment income, make the Bush tax cuts permanent but also nationalize failing banks, scrub the bad assests and securities out and then re-sell the now viable banks back into the market.

Then he would fuck Nancy’s brains out and take a nap making William Haig believe he is running the country.

[Postul8]

also nationalize failing banks, scrub the bad assests and securities out and then re-sell the now viable banks back into the market.

You've moved on from alcohol to psychotropic substances, haven't you, Frogwart?

[JW Frogen]

also nationalize failing banks, scrub the bad assests and securities out and then re-sell the now viable banks back into the market.

You've moved on from alcohol to psychotropic substances, haven't you, Frogwart?

Well, I guess being fired from a bank may make you an expert, of a kind, but you may want to explain how Reagan's successful saving of the savings a loan industry is not preferable to Obama's just let some one else write the bill that will define my Presidency and then I will sell it policy?

[Postul8]

also nationalize failing banks, scrub the bad assests and securities out and then re-sell the now viable banks back into the market.

You've moved on from alcohol to psychotropic substances, haven't you, Frogwart?

Well, I guess being fired from a bank may make you an expert, of a kind, but you may want to explain how Reagan's successful saving of the savings a loan industry is not preferable to Obama's just let some one else write the bill that will define my Presidency and then I will sell it policy?

Being 'out of it', more than you're 'with it' makes you effectively disabled, so I'll cut you a little slack, just this once. When you come down, have a read of this and see if you find any reference in it to nationalising banks, scrubbing out bad assets & securities and re-selling banks into a market. If your vision is impaired, you can always download the podcast. It's less than 30 minutes and so very well detailed. The people involved in that turn-around are actually working for Obama today. Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!