What on earth does the blankety-blank market want?

They passed the stimulus bill and the thing is tanking…again??

And, I’m a boater so I’m personally all for Coast Guard spending. But, that’s not the issue.

On any of these issues, I believe we have to ask, is it timely — that is hitting in 2009 or early 2010? An icebreaker vessel probably takes several years to go from awarding of the contract to completion, so it would fail on that front. Is it targeted? I don’t think there is any argument here that our economy depends on icebreakers. And, certainly, it fails the temporary test.

With regard to replacing the Federal fleet, the issue is again the same. Just ask those questions. Replacing good vehicles with ‘greener’ ones is something worth doing, but it fails the three tests. And, what actual economic value is enhanced by dumping perfectly good cars and buying new ones right now? $600 million is a huge amount of money that we have to borrow and pay back with interest.

The merits of a particular type of spending may be fine, but the point of this legislation is economic stimulus, not just a ‘catch all’ spending bill for the government. Those things can be addressed later when the economy has recovered.

Conservatives are deriding much of the spending as “pork” not stimulus. However, let’s take the money for a new Coast Guard IceBreaker ship - That ship will be built by a private ship building company creating private sector jobs. Is that not stimulative? I suspect the if the money were for a new navy war ship of some sort, conservatives would be all for it. But what’s the difference in terms of jobs and stimulus between building a ship for the Coast Guard vs. the Navy?

Another item criticized by conservatives - the $600 million to replace the federal auto fleet with fuel efficient cars and trucks. Isn’t buying cars from the auto companies so they can keep their factories and workers employed a good idea, better than “bailing them out”.

Another example - Buying new computers for the Agriculture Department so that payments and services to farm bureaus could be improved. The computers would be bought from say, Dell and the programming would be done by say, IBM or Computer Sciences Corporation. Would this companies benefit by this spending. How is that not stimulative.

If someone could explain the conservative mind-set in this, I would really appreciate it. It seems to me that in conservatives view, government spendiing is “bad” by defintion, no matter what the specifics or reality of the spending would be.

Thanks

Non-partisan, why yes of course Mr Brouwer, you really are as non-partisan as your analysis is honest.

However, recessions are a natural occurrence with free markets and are a healthy part of economic recovery; the fundamental problems have not been fixed because none will allow the recession to clean out the rot.

There is nothing in the current stimulus bill which is designed to ‘get us out of a recession’ so why all the mumbo-jumbo about economic analysis?

The ‘current economic, geopolitical and financial issues we are all facing’ are not going to go away by piling on more economic, geopolitical and financial problems.

The whole stimulus plan is dishonest, so cut out the honest analysis mumbo-jumbo; I am sick of the double-speak.

This is a rather bold statement to make about your tutoring skills. In any event; you tutored them, you tell me if they’re able to construct anything.

The President is stating he needs the stimulated spending plan in order to save the economy with shovel-ready jobs, so where will an unemployed MBA find work if the only jobs available are digging dirt for few dollars?

“It’s an economic, geopolitical and financial issue that we as Americans need to resolve.”

Again please inform us how the Trillion$$$ spending plan resolves the current economic, geopolitical and financial issues we are all facing?

Nice work but a very important fact is being left out of the Stimulus debate and that fact is that the bill is purely a spending bill there is no stimulus in it. So even if it is timely , targeted and temporary which it isn’t either it still is not stimulative.

Is there a single marginal rate cut anywhere to be found in this massive spending bill? Tax rebates and tax credit do nothing to spur future production, they are transfer payments to people who already performed work in the past.

Keep up the good work