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Ever heard that song, It's A LIttle To Late To Do The Right Thing Now?

One dollar, every SECOND of every DAY, for the next thirty-two THOUSAND years and it'll all be paid off....no sweat!

Doug:

I take it you're not buying what the folks in Washington are selling. (Good for you, neither am I.)

I spent some time reading the final product yesterday - the first hundred pages - and was astounded by what I read. First, there is hardly any oversight. Congress just gives billions to the secretaries of the respectived departments to spend. Often Congress does not even say what the money is the be spent on other than, say, science. Its a short, one paragraph appropriation to spend billions on science, or NASA, etc.

I have trouble understanding how a lot of this stuff is stimulative. Increasing welfare payments to American Somoa and others (pg 12) or eliminating time restrictions on food stamps (hence, undoing much of the 1996 welfare reform bill) are much more about a liberal policy agenda than than getting people back to work. Moreover, some of these programs are permanent, further increasing the cost of the program beyond the stated cost.

I am convinced that the folks in Washington don't have a clue what's wrong or to fix the economy and that they will do what politicians always seem to do and just throw money at it. I am not a pessimist (but I am an optimist with experience). We have the same folks who are culpable for this mess still in charge, i.e. Barney Frank, and I wager that this recession will be deep, dark and long unless people take charge of their own lives and demand better leadership not just in Washington but also at the state and local levels of government.

Then there are the

Here are some truly bipartisan headlines from articles concerning the, very likely, disastrous bill. We have the liberal LA Times, the business community's view point from IBD, the conservative Heritage Foundation, and the non-partisan CBO all decrying the thoughgtless legislation. These organizations with widely disparate views on most issues, have found common ground on this one!

The Los Angeles Times editorial says stimulus isn't worth it.

Investor's Business Daily says plan is egregious waste.

The Heritage Foundation reports on the true cost of the stimulus bill: It's actually $3.27 trillion

CBO: Obama stimulus harmful over long haul.

We must something into law saying that members of congress cannot vote on a bill which they have not read. Of course, they don't obey the Constitution now, so perhaps any new law would also be meaningless. A free society cannot exist when those sworn to uphold the Constitution regularly ignore it. We fought King George for far less!

Let's see. Who are O'Bummer's two favorite presidents? (1) Lincoln, who suspended Habeus Corpus for AMERICAN citizens, not terrorists, during the Civil War, and actualy jailed a member of congress who stronly opposed him, and

(2) FDR who prolonged the Great Depression for many years. Here is more on "favorite" #2 from the UCLA Newsroom.

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933

Recovery came only after the Department of Justice dramatically stepped enforcement of antitrust cases nearly four-fold and organized labor suffered a string of setbacks, the economists found.

"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."

Well Tony, our government stopped antitrust actions quite awhile ago and will most likely never go back to reinforcing them. This actually isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Also, a look at the numbers show steady improvement through FDR's first term, then when he stopped many New Deal policies in 1937 because of pressures to balance the budget things got worse again. What finally got us out? World War II, which after all was what now? You got it, a whole lot of government spending.

Also your characterization of the CBO report is extremely misleading. Are you sure you're not talking about the made-up one that Republicans were discussing before the real one was released?

The last thing you remember as you're going under for surgery is his soothing voice:

"Just count backward from 800 billion ..."* Doug

Amazing! Not only did the victim change Doctors, but ended up with the same medical Republican team dress as Democrats that started the Stimulis disease 1 to began with........" Now count frontwords........ 800 Billion

If I read correctly - the "package" sets aside more money for DTV "coupons" than it does for securing our southernmost border?

Nice.

Hey Andrew, you need to contact the two UCLA economists that penned the piece. I'm simply relaying their information. Yes Obama's massive spending shoud have some effect early on, but will be disastrous in the long run, as it was in the late 30's.

You seem to have a difficult time grasping the concept of private economy spending and government spending. Governments produce nothing! They spend tax dollars. At least defense spending goes primarily to those who produce tangible goods, like say, tanks, airplanes, missiles, etc. They are not "make work" projects using over priced union workers.

The "Big Dig" in Boston was a massive government "stimulus" project. How has that one worked out? How about the light rail projects in Charlotte, Minneapolis, Los Angeles! How's AMTRAK worked out! How about the recently completed visitor center in D.C. built so Harry Reid wouldn't have to smell his constituents in the summer. How close to budget did it come! How close did it finish to the projected finish date!

Why can't you folks on the left figure out that central planning (Socialism) doesn't work? If it did the Soviet Union would have been a Utopia, as would Cuba. One of the major factors in the financial collapse was due to screw ups of our "central planners" at the Federal Reserve.

I simply love it when the left tries to call this a failure of Capitalism. When Capitalism ruled lenders did not make loans to those without the ability to pay back the loans. That produced a term called "red lining." The liberals forced the abolition of "red lining" under the guise of their warped philosophy that everyone has the "right" to a home, whether or not they could qualify for loan like the rest of us did!

Most amusing about these liberal fools in the senate is that even though they had to privatize their dining room because they had lost millions trying to run it, they want to run banks and auto companies, though again it was mostly their regulations, and the UAW that have strangled the auto makers in Michigan, while their competitors in S.C, Kentucky, Alabama, and Tennessee are not in much better shape. Wonder why that is!

If big government is good for the economy why are Crazyfornia's and New York's coffers not bulging with surpluses, rather than drowning in debt, and begging to be bailed out by the only entity deeper in debt than they are. If you choose to reply, kindly answer the questions!

Actually light rail in Charlotte has been very successful. The Big Dig was not a stimulus project, it was an infrastructure one. The two are not the same, though in some cases they overlap. As for the government not producing anything, if they hire a construction company to say, build a building, is that building any less real than if a private company contracted them to build it? Of course not, many of these distinctions are false. The point of doing government spending now is that there isn't enough private spending to keep the economy afloat. These are emergency times in which the economy is failing and normal rules don't apply. Which leads me to the UCLA economists.

They make a lot of assumptions in their neoclassical model, and some of them don't work in cases like the depression. One such assumption was that prices are fully flexible, meaning changing constantly. But as you know, with most things, say a soda for example, the price does not change day to day but will see changes every few weeks. This paper shows the New Deal expanded the economy. The bottom line is FDR's presidency saw four years of rapid economic growth, one year of contraction, and seven years very rapid economic growth. Basically he had a phenomenal record, only he started from a very low point.

You argument about California and New York is specious. Big governments and small governments alike can run deficits or surpluses. In California probably the most important reason they are in such shape is that it is constitutionally almost impossible in California to raise taxes.

Again, your UAW argument is quite flawed. You're wrong that the competitors are in much better shape. Other countries are bailing out their auto industry as well.

You can always find examples of government wasteful spending (for example, the Air Force), as you also can in the private sector ($40,000 trash can). It's a problem of course. However any economist or anyone who's even studied a bit of economics can tell you that there are certain situations where the market does not work, areas known as market failure. These areas include, but aren't limited to, providing public goods. These are areas that the government must step in. The most basic example is the military. The private sector wouldn't provide it. Another is roads. Another problem with the market is that it is not self-regulating, as none other than Alan Greenspan himself now admits. There will always be some government intervention in the market, otherwise there would be no freedom because the rich would control the poor. There was a time when we quite possibly had too much government interference in the market, but the pendulum has swung too far the other way this decade, as anyone who has honestly evaluated the situation can tell you.

A quick note, the term "market failure" is not the same as saying the failure of capitalism. It's talking about specific instances, not failure of the whole system. I feel like that phrase may be used to attack some on the left for being central planning socialists when that's not what they're saying at all.

Andrew: Unbelievable. I was being facetious about the "Big Dig" being a stimulus for the area!

The Charlotte light rail is a success only if you define all of the taxpayers subsidizing most of the fares of the few riders. Ditto for L.A. and Minneapolis.

When an existing private company gets a contract their goal is be very efficent. When the government contracts a company that company is almost always to pay union wages, and are required to follow policies that make the government the totally inefficient behemoth that it is.

I'm talking about the foreign auto makers who produce cars here. There cost per car is as much as $2500 less per unit because of the insane benefits, and nutty work rules the Detroit guys have to deal with.

You keep bringing up the military. One of the few mandates of the Constitution, a conveniently forgotten document, is to PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE. No where does it say to provide housing, healthcare, pay for people mortgages.

Yes it says, promote the general welfare. That's a far cry from what is happening now.

Finally, if we had such a "booming economy" during the FDR years, why was unemployment in 1938 still 17-19%, and why did it never go below 14%, which happened for a brief period before heading back up. The final passage of the UCLA guys was we would have recovered from the drpression much sooner had the government not intervened. The history of our recessions since that time prove that point. Most have lasted from 6-18 months. Look at the 10+ year malaise of the Japanese economy after interference by the government.

Tony, as I say the UCLA guys' analysis was quite flawed. I don't know what else I can do besides the link I already had that shows the New Deal helped the economy. Many economists also argued that monetary policy alone could have stopped the Depression and any downturn. Right now, however, monetary policy has done all it can do to help and it hasn't worked. I'll address your points, but that'll be all the back and forth I'll do.

As for private contracts vs. government ones: yes, the market is more efficient which is often but not always the same as good. Also, when choosing between a less than ideally efficient contract vs. no contract, what company would choose no contract?

The solution that could save Detroit and other companies while making our economy more competitive and in the long run save the government a ton of money would be a national health care system. That $2500 difference in cost would erased if they didn't have health care costs. The Big 3, when negotiating contracts chose to save money in the short term and push costs down the road. Their short-term thinking, not the unions, did them in. The German auto industry has always had stronger unions than ours. Like everyone else, they are suffering now, but they have always been competitive.

I bring up the military because it's perhaps the simplest example of a public good. I could just as easily say roads or systems to protect property rights.

I do think the government should provide health care for all, though it's not in the constitution. The short version of my constitutional argument is that anyone who thinks the needs of society are the same as they were in 1787 is beyond thick.

I didn't say there was a booming economy under FDR. I said it was rapidly growing. It started from an extremely low point, and yes unemployment didn't go below 14% during his first few years, but that's more than 10 points lower than when he started. Under his presidency he eventually got it to full employment. People like to talk about 1938, but that was a result of him ending many New Deal policies in 1937, and was the only bad year as far as growth (I emphasize the growth. I'm not saying things were good, I'm saying they were improving. You seem to have trouble noticing the difference).

Japan's "government interference" was weak and half-hearted. They propped up their so-called "zombie banks" without forcing reform on them. That is why so many, including many on the right now, are arguing that we should do what Sweden did and temporarily nationalize our banks. Sweden recovered from their financial crisis pretty quickly.

The history of recessions since the Depression doesn't do anything but prove that none of them were as bad as the Depression.

I don't know why you seem to hate unions so much, but they are very important to the efficiency of an economy. Fair bargaining and enforcement of contracts are vital to the operation of the free market, and in labor contracts a union is the only way to ensure that the workers can bargain fairly (unless said workers have rare skills) and that the company is held accountable for their agreement. Putting aside fairness and justice, the free market needs strong unions.