After months of confusion, we are about to close a painful chapter in the economic crisis of 2008-2009. With the imminent passage of the $800 billion stimulus package combined with the roll-out of the next stages of the government-orchestrated bank bailout and recapitalization, we are about to end the talking phase and enter the doing phase. While no one can say for sure whether these plans will work, it's certain that they will have an effect.
Many will debate the details endlessly, whether or not there is the right mix of spending and tax cuts, whether the plan to sequester and purchase "toxic assets" is aggressive enough and if the overall approach will serve to instill a modicum of confidence among hundreds of millions of consumers and hundreds of thousands of businesses that have little. But while the devil is sometimes in the details, this time perhaps not.
We will never know if another plan, a different plan would work better or whether this plan in its details will be heralded as the key to a recovery or excoriated as the cause of a depression. We will never have an opportunity to play out different scenarios in some massive game-theory experiment. We will only have this particular plan and these particular actions, in conjunction with the stimulus spending of the Chinese government ($600 billion or more), the French, the British, the Japanese, the South Koreans, and dozens of others amounting to hundreds of billions more, as well as rate cuts by central banks around the world, all ad hoc, but all amounting to massive government spending and globally low interest rates that in theory make the cost of capital cheap even as banks make it scarce.
History will one day be written of today, though we don't yet know if this is a middle act or a denouement. Historians like commentators today will attempt to weave a cause-and-effect story of what happened and why, but much as we now endlessly debate the New Deal, they wont agree about what caused what, about what worked and what did not.
But this much is certain: we are now cleaning up a mess, and even if we inadvertently add to it, we are no longer feeding it. The massive leverage generation that took place between 2005 and 2007 has been halted. The layering of debt onto the shakiest flimsiest pillar of the U.S. economy is no more. While debt will rise as a result of spending, it will be based on the entire system as collateral, and not a subdivision in Henderson, Nevada. That at least is a move forward we can celebrate.
So let us pause for a moment and be thankful that the next stage is at hand. As muddled as this one may be -- and all major measures taken in crisis usually are -- it is born of the drive to reconstruct and not profiteer, and that alone is progress to applaud.
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Senate Stimulus Bill (Full Text)
Updated on February 8 The pdf is now available. * * * * * Updated on February 8 The compromise Senate stimulus bill has been...
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Obama Admin To Unveil New Rescue Plan For Banks
After weeks of internal debate, the Obama administration has settled on a plan to inject billions of dollars in fresh capital into banks and entice...
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Economists Agree: Pass Stimulus Package Immediately
While economists remain divided on the role of government generally, an overwhelming number from both parties are saying that a government stimulus package -- even...
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Obama Hits The Road Again To Sell A Stimulus Plan
WASHINGTON - The presidential campaign trail often loved Barack Obama more than he loved it back. When he was sworn in last month, he told...
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Why The Stimulus Is Too Small
There's a hurricane coming. Meteorologists aren't sure what category it will be but know it will be the worst in generations. There's a warehouse full...
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GOP Fired Up By Stimulus Battle: "We're Picking Good Fights"
You see it all over Capitol Hill, in the hallways, the hearing rooms, the gathering spots. Republicans, coming off a devastating, across-the-board electoral defeat, are...
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Krugman: Obama Let Centrists Hurt Stimulus Bill
What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers...
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Stimulus, Yes; Bank Bailout II, No
If Obama does his job he will mobilize public opinion and isolate Republicans who would rather sink the economy than give a Democratic president legislative success.
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Economic Stimulus: Investing in Vets Delivers a Huge Bang for the Buck
As the Senate begins to debate the stimulus package this week, our elected leaders must ensure that any plan fully supports the newest generation of veterans and their families.
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Bipartisanship Fetishism vs. What's Best for America: Obama Needs to Choose
At tonight's press conference, CBS's Chip Reid asked President Obama about whether, given the lack of bipartisanship on the stimulus bill, the White House was "moving away" from its "emphasis on bipartisanship?" Obama replied that his "bottom line when it comes to the recovery package" is: does it create or save jobs? That's good to hear because the president's actions over the last couple of weeks have left many wondering whether bipartisanship, rather than what's best for America, has been his priority. Perhaps there will come a day when the Venn diagrams of the Republican Party and the national interest actually intersect. But, at the moment, we find ourselves with a GOP whose leaders believe, among other things, that government jobs are not real jobs, and that Obama's stimulus plan is "the socialist way." Hard for bipartisanship to flourish in this kind of atmosphere.
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Billionaire For A Day: A More Entertaining Economic Stimulus Package
Let's do something to capture all Americans attention and by doing so make the economic stimulus package real to all of us: 800 Americans will each win a billion dollars.
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Palin's Facebook Page: Opposes Obama's Stimulus Plan
We learn on Facebook that Palin has "serious concerns" with Obama's stimulus package. Say what?
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Just imagine: What if McCain Had Won the Election and Obama had Shafted him During the Stimulus Debate?
Um, are McCain's feelings after losing an election the big question on people's minds in the nation? I think the stimulus package is the focus of the country right now, don't you?
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Stimulate Me!
Experts seem relatively unified, if such a thing is possible, on the issue of direct economic stimulus to every taxpayer. They're against it.
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Where's Ross Perot When You Need Him?
I'm ready for a little old fashioned Ross Perot specification of the expected outcomes of the stimulus package. This is what we call in education a "teachable moment."
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Rahm Throws Pelosi Under The Bus To Save Stimulus Bill
The story of the morning seems to be that the Obama team is unhappy with Nancy Pelosi and the House committee chairs for delivering up such a liberal, pork-laden bill that they themselves really had nothing to do with.
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Our Twin Crises
That we are unable to manage a functioning economy or deal with climate change because rapacious Wall Street traders have disproportionate political clout is a measure of our political dysfunction.
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Oh, About That "End" of the Obama Honeymoon ...
Where Obama may have made a mistake is in being too substantively accommodating with people who are basically not going to support him except in the event of an extraterrestrial invasion.
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Patriotic Extortion
Imagine if the Democrats had not pre-capitulated to the Republicans on the stimulus bill. Imagine if they had forced the Republicans to actually mount a filibuster.
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Steele Crazy After All This Year
We are witnessing, not so much the collapse of the Republican Party, as its slide into insanity. What was the GOP's great accomplishment last week? A show of "unity" enough to block the first stimulus package.
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Spaghetti Economics
We need to throw lots of spaghetti against the wall, and fast -- and continue to throw lots of spaghetti against the wall for at least a few years.
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Command and Control?
At a time when the country is virtually pleading with him to exert command and control, he has yielded that role to congressional partisans that the public doesn't quite know and almost certainly doesn't trust.
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Why the Stimulus is Needed, Part II
Given the decreases in personal consumption expenditures and gross private domestic investment, what are the chances of the consumer spending again or business investing again?
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House vs. Senate Stimulus Bills
Some highlights: The House version would spend $60 billion more on education -- the Senate version adds more than $100 billion for tax cuts to individuals and families.
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A Better Stimulus for the Economy
The problem with our economy is not weak spending, which is just a symptom of our predicament. The root problem is lack of confidence in the future.
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The Truth About the Stimulus Package
Until other countries are willing to do their share to stimulate the global economy, the Obama administration is right to lift our boat first.
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Operation Zero Cred
The GOP with Joe the Plumber on the Hill this week to discuss the economy. They should be summarily shut out of this process -- whether or not the president wants them out.
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Stimulus Package: If You Jump Halfway Across a Chasm You Fall Into the Abyss
If we are going to spend two trillion dollars (and most likely more) trying to deal with the economic crisis, shouldn't we do it right?
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Change vs. Bipartisanship: What Happens When You Throw a Bipartisan Party and Half the Guest List Stays Home?
The problem with a message of bipartisanship is that it makes it very difficult to tell the story of why things are so bad that we need dramatic change.
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Delusional or Just Cynical?
A good example of the "frothing at the mouth" reaction to the stimulus plan is a blog penned by Jonathan Tobin, Executive Editor of Commentary.
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Obama Financial Team to Taxpayers: You'll Get Nothing, and Like It
There's nothing that prevents the public from getting their fair share of any future bank profits appropriate to the high risk investment they are being forced to make.
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No, Seriously: Republicans Don't Get It
Investment in bike paths will not only improve our economy, and take our country in the right direction for the future; it is exactly the kind of investment the American people want.
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Selling Stimulus
What the administration needs, and what its senior advisers proved so adept at during the campaign, is a simpler, more compelling, campaign-style message for what this legislation is really about.
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A New Movement
There is a movement to strip billions of dollars from the stimulus bill led by Ben Nelson of Omaha (whose Democratic status is debatable) and Susan Collins (Republican) of Maine.
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Bipartisanship (is) for Dummies
The idea that we can turn this economy around by caving to the feckless demands of those who screwed it up in the first place is utterly bankrupt.
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Obama: Use This And the Jobs Bill Will Pass With a 100 Vote Margin
Our best salesman is Obama. There is no house or senate member who this president cannot roll over.
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Obama to Speak Monday Night on Stimulus While Rep. Pete Sessions Says Republicans Are the New Taliban
If the media hadn't acted so irresponsibly the past two weeks and President Obama hadn't tried to be so bipartisan, he might not have had to take to the airwaves, but that's not the case anymore.
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Pulling the Wool Over Our Eyes
The American people elected President Obama in record numbers to lead our country in a new direction, if the Republicans aren't willing to join him, the least they can do is get out of his way.
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Our Phone Calls Are Working, Don't Let Up!
If representatives know that's what their constituents want, they will be both more inclined to keep that critical public investment from the House bill, and act with the speed.
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Obama Undermines Jobs Mandate For the Sake of Bipartisanship
Roosevelt had the New Deal, Kennedy had the New Frontier, Johnson had the Great Society, and Obama has...the stimulus plan. An abstract goal with fungible components that valued process above all else.
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Lions Coach Up Steelers on Stimulus Package
How can anyone take the GOP seriously on economic policy? Agree or disagree on their philosophy; their record is demonstrably terrible. They are the Detroit Lions of Congress.
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Republicans Say They'd Support the "Right" Stimulus Bill, But Stimulus for Them Is Only More Tax Cuts
If you look closely at what the Republicans are saying, this isn't a debate on the merits of this stimulus legislation, but rather another round of policy battles fought during last year's campaign.
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Democrats in Congress Need to Learn How to Lead
I am losing patience with congressional Democrats' innate instinct to capitulate, something that has been evident since the November 2006 mid-term elections.
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Any Economic Stimulus Spending also needs to prohibit any imported products (even if we no longer manufacture those products, we can start making them, even at a higher price) from being purchased with these funds, and also prohibit all outsourcing of the Labor Required. This is probably necessary at this time, even if it will cause massive inflation to the point that it takes a whole day's wages to buy one loaf of bread. Riots and insurrection are predictable, ala the French Revolution, when the people find their situations economically hopeless.
What an unmitigated disaster that would have been !
Here’s the timeline, if you accept the “secret weapon” rules: Reagan spends the money. Bush 41 continues to drain the taxpayer’s pool. Clinton pays down the debt. Bush 43 spends the money. Then …
Obama Gets It
The Great Recession and the nearly one-trillion dollar economic stimulus package are the greatest gifts Democrats have been given since Jerry Ford. By using “secret weapon” number one, “Spend taxpayer’s money before the other side gets their hands on it,” President O stands to render the White House “Republican Proof” for generations. I’m guessing, but I’m hoping that someone in the Democratic Party figured this out a few months back. I’m praying this is not simply happening without any forethought.
Unless the current crop of dominant donkeys get absolutely nothing from blowing a trillion dollars into the economy, there’s a new phrase that will replace Nancy Pelosi’s “we won.”
It’s simple. The initial braggadocio is about to transmogrify into “It’s working.” That’s something the former home team used to be able to pitch. However, as we huddle, cold and shaking in the bleachers, there’s no manager walking toward the mound, no one warming-up in the bull pen and the game’s been over since last November.
Our political parties continue to act like two opposing baseball teams. Those who wear white-or-black pinstripes are either looking forward to the World Series or Election Day – and to get there, both types require strong players and movable strategies to make the cut.
Professional baseball team owners also use these proverbial “secret weapons”:
1. Pay enormous salaries to players before the competitor opens its checkbook
2. Show your fans that the money you spent on player’s salaries was a good investment
Translated to politics, one political team has used a similar formula to keep its bases covered since the David Stockton/Artie Laffer series:
1. Spend taxpayer’s money before the other side gets their hands on it
2. Prove that the way you’ve spent the money works for your constituents
Within the past few years the other team finally figured out these “secret weapons.” And now the side that perfected these maneuvers (during the Reagan Administration) is worried that Barack Obama and the Democrats are about to load the bases by using this successful line of attack.
Real Republicans Love Bill Clinton
William 42 was God-sent to the G.O.P. and they played him like a mouth organ. He was cornered into paying off the deficit while being hamstrung by the clouds of scandal. He had to deal with a Republican Congress for the first time since the Paleozoic Era.
(continued)
Stimulus Pkg. = slow but steady success
BankBailout = EpicFail
the ReThugs think they can magically reclaim the position of "FiscalConservatives" now?
and the MSM thinks they can magically reclaim that of "Investigative Journalists"?
sorry. no deal.
The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
Elderly Hardest Hit
Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.
Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs