A Brilliant Op-Ed Title

Stimulus saves nine out of every five jobs. Brilliant.

Huckabee on the (anti-religious) Stimulus Bill

I am a big supporter of Mike Huckabee. He is not given to fear-mongering, so when he calls the stimulus bill "anti-religious," I take it pretty seriously. He's right.

George Will Skewers The Politicians

George Will at his best.

The stimulus legislation is a strange response to the president's inaugural call for "a new era of responsibility." State and local governments, which in the five flush years 2003–07 irresponsibly increased spending five times faster than population growth, will get hundreds of billions. Forty-nine states have governors better than California's, but as that state sinks into insolvency (its budget deficit is 40 percent of the sum of all the states' deficits) Arnold Schwarzenegger is merrily saving the planet.

Print or Tax

For winning the Nobel Prize in economist, we find Paul Krugman, um, not very smart when it comes to economics. His answer to the disaster that Bush's economic and regulatory policies have put us in is for the government to spend more money on infrastructure. In the process he demonstrates that he has not read Henry Hazlitt's book Economics in One Lesson. Krugman makes the fatal error of not considering anything other than the immediate issue when he studies an economic plan. He appears to have given no thought, and has absolutely no plan for what to do with 1.2 trillion dollar deficits, other than to say, "we will worry about that later."

Kevin Hassett in Bloomberg worries about it now, and rightfully so. He says that the government will have only two options as an end game: print or tax. If we print we will end up like the Weimar Republic in Germany, with hyper-inflation. How about if we tax?

While advocates of Keynesian-style stimulus [Paul Krugman is one] are correct that this economy is terrible enough to warrant dramatic action, it is hard to understand how such a fiscal path might help. So what if second-quarter gross domestic product blips up a little bit? What business is going to expand its operations with the mother of all tax hikes peeking over the horizon? If government spending provided such a wonderful boost to the economy, we would be in Nirvana already.

Oink, Oink, Goes Senator Reid

The pigs are running to the trough siphoning off funds from the 500—no, 700—no, 850—n0, 1 trillion dollar "stimulus package." Harry Reid, Senate Majority leader, is going to get his share because he can. Naturally, Las Vegas is going to use it up...I mean, use it wisely.

"All economists agree that one way to alleviate the pain of this deep recession is to create jobs. We have jobs that are ready to go forward in a matter of weeks."

What Harry means to say, is that, here is another huge bill we can pass on to our kids and grandkids so that we won't have to take the pain of living through what we've created. I'll bet his grandkids are very thankful!

More (Possible) Nitwittery from the Administration and Congress

So...nothing is working thus far in repairing the damage that our overconsumption has caused. What is Congress and the Administration to do? I know, how about Stimulus Package II, since the first one worked so well (not). From the article:

"We have to prop up consumption," Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview in which he revealed some of the details the party leadership was discussing.

Earth to Barney. Earth to Barney. Over-consumption and over-spending are what got us here in the first place. Nice to see you learned something from the meltdown.

The rationale for another stimulus package, particularly one that helps the states and cities, is compelling for many economists. The nearly $1 trillion that Congress and the Federal Reserve are making available to the financial system is intended to make credit more available. That props up the supply side.

Is this writer serious? Does he understand history and/or economics. If you have to "prop up" something, you are propping it up only so that down the road it will collapse further. What you must do is return to balance, i.e. teach Americans to spend no more than they earn.

I expect that when this gets passed, Bush will go along as he always has because he is totally a fiscal conservative...except when he isn't.