In spirit of the unfettered and supported spending frenzy that eventually led the US economy to this point, Pres. Obama yesterday unveiled a NEW plan to bail out homeowners. The cost? Oh another 80 billion dollars (with a B). Now I was one of those people who thought that the initial stimulus package was too big, to vague, and with too many mis-appropriations. Does 660 million dollars to revamp all the elevators in NYC sound like economic stimulus? Apparently Otis has a great lobbyist. Otherwise that's 660 million going to oh about 200 people and their companies bottom line. I'm slowly going through the BILL (here's the link ) all 407 pages of goodness and badness and absolute crap. How does one churn out 407 pages in only a few days anyway? One more point NYC got 5 billion, the budget shortfall this year is 4 billion. So how many jobs are you really going to create with 99 million? Very very few, that money is going towards debts- not as promised new jobs. Anyway as a financial conservative (and proud of it) I have serious issues with the bill; and the major one is that I don't think its going to do much- if anything. I firmly believe that we have set a dangerous (dare I say fatal) precedent of 'bailouts.'
If I may be so bold here's the analogy: You enter a casino but before you actually get to use the casino, here comes a richly dressed person (your banker) who you'd think has much more money than you and he says you need to pay up to play. OK fine you realize there are costs associated, so you pay, and then watch him take the money you just gave him and lay it on the craps table, where he proceeds to lose it spectacularly. He then comes back to you and says if you don't front him some money the bank will close. Now if its me, after what I just watched I take my money and go elsewhere- but not the government they continue to pour money down this leaky bucket, all the while devaluing my money.
So I ask: You just passed the biggest spending bill in the history of man, and two days later you have the gall to ask for another 1/10 of what you just got? Two Days? So now we have printed and borrowed all this money and we still want more to gamble with? There's a word out there called inflation, coupled with hyper means hyperinflation. All this so called lending money gets lent? that's what we have, back to double digit inflation numbers. Awesome. We had layoffs at work yesterday, clearly the stimulus plan benefited them, if companies don't believe it will help then its just one giant loss for the American taxpayer.
Trip Dates Decided
13 years ago
6 comments:
I disagree with you on this, as I'm sure you can guess. First of all, you call this a BAILOUT bill, which it is NOT. This is a STIMULUS bill, aimed primarily at creating jobs and investing in America; NOT a bill aimed to prop up more banks, as the BAILOUT was. My main issue with your argument is that you see this money going no where, and not producing any return. However, I just don't see that happening. That $660 mil for NYC to update all their elevators? That's probably enough $$ to employ a couple hundred people for a few years to just go around the city upgrading infrastructure. You don't think NYC needs it? I'd say they do. Besides that, you're worrying about hyperinflation? Dude, haven't you been paying attention?? If anything, we need to be worried about DEFLATION right now, due to businesses cutting prices widely just to make some revenue... Currently, we're pretty far from a stag-flation or hyper-inflation scenario, and this stimulus fixes larger issues at hand by creating JOBS. A large portion of this bill goes to infrastructure upgrades, which is EXACTLY what we need. Although there are a lot of white collar types out of work due to this economy, there are way way more blue collar workers who can't pay the mortgages they could barely pay before they were laid off, and those infrastructure jobs will go directly to those types of American workers. This is a LONG-TERM investment in improving our country. Are you going to argue that the freeway projects haven't paid off ten-fold? 100-fold? Even more? I put this on the same level, and it's about damn time.
Dave you are drinking too much of the Kool-Aid! Keep watching the money trail, they have a website to see where its going- even NYC officals have acknowledged that the money is not going to so much create jobs- but sustain them (this means its a bailout of their budget deficit) I don't even want to know what CA is doing with their money- putting toward the interest on their debt?
Not a bailout? Really?
Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Recovery in Action: Minnesota and Oregon
The first dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are going out in just two days -- Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009 -- in the form of federal support for state medicaid payments.
But the impact is already being felt well beyond that. Just today, Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak announced that he was prepared to swallow hard and make significant cuts to public works and public safety. Thanks to the ARRA, he won't have to:
"Now let’s turn to Police. If the Governor’s cuts were passed on directly to the Police Department, it would have led to the elimination of 57 sworn police officer positions and 19 non sworn employees. We will not have to do that because of two factors. First, working with Chief Dolan, we are proposing elimination of $1.5 million in non personnel costs, including overtime.
"Second the federal Recovery Act’s one time public safety grants arrived just in time. President Obama said he would help cities keep police officers on the job and he has delivered. Because of this funding I will be proposing no personnel cuts in the Police Department. Next time someone asks you what the Recovery Act will do, start by telling them it will keep 57 police officers working on the streets of Minneapolis."
My issue with the term "Bailout" is that it implies someone screwed up. These states that are in debt didn't screw up anything - they're just getting killed by the economy as are the rest of us. The real bailout bill went to companies that needed the money because they made many MANY serious errors in judgement and took WAY too much risk; that's not the case with these state governments that need money to keep people employed. Keeping people employed, and creating new jobs where possible, is the whole idea here! Creating new jobs doesn't do a whole lot if everyone else is losing theirs. If you're arguing that keeping 57 Minneapolis police officers on the street is a "bailout" and not worth the money, then I just don't know what to say... To me, your example proves MY point, and not the other way around!! THATS THE WHOLE INTENT, and it's a GOOD ONE!
I'm not arguing the fact that keeping people employed is good. I too think that is important. But lets call a spade and spade here; this bill is bailout. Giving money to budget shortfalls to governments so government workers don't lose their jobs is just socialism. Local government should be run like a business- and every business has downturns and if you are not prepared for it things need to change- you are advocating that everyone who works for the government- well none of them can lose their jobs. But you, me, anyone in the private sector who works for a responsible company that didn't need a bailout but still has to lay off people (as happened at my work)gets NOTHING, why arent those jobs saved? Are they not important to the people who lost them? How is that fair?
The states can do what they want with the money, and if they so choose to spend on it maintaining employment levels, then that is their CHOICE. They also can choose to invest it in infrastructure, which Minnesota is planning to do on a large scale, and I'm sure many other states are as well. The fact is, Government is NOT business, and the public would be outraged if it ever ran itself as one. In fact, if it WERE business, you would see failing states getting "acquired" by successful ones, through either actual business deals, or brute force. Shit states like Mississippi and Alabama would get bought out and integrated into their more successful neighbors. That's not happening, because government is more-or-less a regional monopoly, with all the negatives and positives that monopolies bring. Yes, government should have efficiency as a primary goal, but it is NOT in place to make anyone a profit; only improve our society! If the government, whether local or national, is running a surplus, what does the public expect it to do? GIVE THE EXCESS BACK to the taxpayers, not reinvest the profits as a business would, or pay down it's debt! They expect tax cuts, rather than their government doing anything positive with the excess. Thus, how is a government supposed to manage through an unprecedented downturn such as this when they can't save up in the good years for when the bad years come? Goverment isn't business, and you can not expect it to run just like one. Yes, unnecessary goverment jobs should be eliminated, but even in bad times we need to maintain a certain level of goverment regardless of the economy. In business, if you're not selling your product, you don't NEED the employees. However, in goverment you can't cut jobs just because you're not making as much income, because you still need to serve the same number of people - your customer count isn't going down, and if anything it's going UP due to the hard times. Thus, in reality you need MORE government in BAD times than in good times!
Interesting side note - in our strategic management class last night we were discussing the AIDS crisis and playing the "finger-pointing" game to determine where the fault lie, if anywhere. My conclusion from the whole evening is that all pharma companies should either be nationalized, or forced to run as non-profits, as they are making their profits at the expense of human life, which is a horrible practice.
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