Banks need to sit liquid for some time, preserving their reserves to cover for added defaults. Added defaults are due thanks to ongoing workforce reductions and continued job loss due to further outsourcing. These issues are bound to lead to further foreclosures/defaults. So bank lending is a key 2nd only to sustainable job creation perhaps?
I also think many are in denial of the simple fact that what goes up MUST come down from time to time. I understand it’s the “American way” to expect everything will go UP UP UP forever but let’s get a grip. Cycles are natural, and the bigger the greed/bubble/boom the bigger the fear/pop/bust. Unstoppable inflation and the fact that more investors have access to tick by tick data and “easy buttons” to trade are cause for our growing market volatility.
A deaf ear is being turned to the fact that the fundamentals in the US are WAYYYY out of wack! We are a consumer nation and provide very little along the way of creation of goods. We are likely the biggest ever DEBTOR nation by a landslide, both consumer and government. The consumer debt to disposable income ratio has been in the red for some time and is only getting worse.
Just my 2 cents which with inflation is now worth about $1,000
but WHAT THE FUCK guy. you fucking want to see this country fall in the shitter more than it has?
would you rather see another 8 years like the last just so you can say democrats suck too? it’s not fucking about that any more. I can understand completely treading carefully at this point but that mindset goes beyond that to useless cynicism.
inb4 it wasn’t just the last 8 years
inb4 it’s the democrats fault
inb4 it’s the republicans fault
inb4 it wasn’t just bush
inb4 black fucking jesus
Its a difficult situation to be sure. To get the banks lending again you need to show some certainty and stability in the markets and economy in general.
My opinion is job creation first. Estimates are anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 jobs lost every day in January. That is killing consumer confidence and bank confidence in the economy.
I honestly hope that this bill works at least most of it. Something needs to be done. And the government needs to show its going to try and help, aka New Deal style.
Fiscal responsibility is something we can work towards after the recession. Right now its not going to help the current mess only prevent future ones.
I also hope that this changes consumerism a bit in this country. Work on not over reaching and having banks and creditors realize who should get loans, who should get loans and how much. We need to learn to “Act our Wage” , and we are all guilty of that.
The mess we are in is the fault of the nation as a whole.
The stupid blame game pisses me off the most. This first round in the house every single republican voted against the bill and almost all democrats voted for it. That tells me that more so than having different priorities, they’re all still playing party loyalty games above doing their jobs.
And at the end of the day it’s our own fault for electing these goons.
At least this new plan is trying something other than pouring money into a liquidity trap? :gotme:
Let me try a little story removing politics from it. Maybe removing something people are so partisanly split on will help.
Five of us are in a boat in the Niagara River, not far from the edge of the falls. We all decided to be there, it wasn’t a very smart thing to do, we’re all to blame, but regardless of all that the motor dies. We set the anchor to prevent us from going over the falls and sit around blaming each other for why we’re here. While yes, the anchor is holding us, we’re still in a pretty bad situation. Attempts to paddle upstream to safety fail. At any point a hundred things could go further wrong and send us over the falls.
All of a sudden a guy comes floating down the river and hops in the boat with us. We’re all a little surprised how he came out of nowhere but when things are bad you overlook stuff like that because you have hope. He says he can change our situation and everything is going to be better. The first step is we have to pull up that anchor because with it set we’re going nowhere. It sounds ok, but two of us are still very concerned about the current that we were previously unable to paddle against.
So the two of us with concerns ask this kind stranger how long he’s been around boats, how many water rescue missions he’s done or if he knows some secret about this Niagara that we don’t that is going to lead us to safety. He rented a boat once, watched that coast guard movie The Guardian and has never seen the Niagara other than a special on the Discovery Channel.
Despite this resume the vote is 4-1 to go with his plan. The other three have been staring at the edge of the falls long enough that fear has overridden reason. He pulls up anchor and starts paddling us toward the falls. He’s right, our situation has definitely changed, but please don’t tell me I want to go over the falls because I’m sitting the back of the boat paddling upstream yelling that you’re all a bunch of idiots.
So yeah, I have serious doubts that Obama’s plan is for the better. I expressed them in the election thread many times if you want to go back and read it. Cliffs notes:
Socialized health care is going to crush our economy the way it has in every other nation that has tried it, much the way it has killed NY. It will be worse here than other nations because we have more poor, more fat, and more lawyers.
A timetable in Iraq throws away the real progress that we’ve made there.
Tax rebates for people who already aren’t paying taxes does not help the economy.
You can’t promise all this new spending and expect to give middle class tax cuts just by taxing the rich.
no one is arguing that money shouldn’t be spent on the arts (I’m all for it, I took a shit load of art classes throughout school and want to get into it as my primary career)
but this is an ECONOMIC package. This should be spent to get us out of this clusterfuck we’re in, not spend it on un-related BS
They are well on their way to making bailouts common place. It is a great way to scare people into thinking they need to give just about all of their money to the government. Like I said about six months ago, you aint seen nothin yet. Just wait for the next tax, it will be called the bailout tax. Oh, and trickle down typically does not include stealing even more money from people.
YOUR MONEY IS BEING STOLEN FROM YOU, but then again, you asked for it America.
Congratulations on getting your wishes.
You know I always thought this was this best country in the world because I didn’t like the social programs in other countries but, now our government is just stealing in broad daylight. There has just got to be a better country than the USA at this point.
“The looting of America”
Sad.
How about Somalia? They don’t even have a government. No taxes.
They were just talking in one of my meetings about how there’s a billion in the package for developing clean coal technology. I guess the commercials are right, there is no such thing right now. The idea for “clean” coal is to strip off and inject the CO2 into the ground. Permanently. That’s “clean.” :uhh:
yeah i really cant think of an industrialized nation with less social programs than we have. Coincidentally, there are some with lower taxes though. :eyebrow:
Maybe. There is a co2 concentrating technology that falls within my skill area, but they’re having the older “expert” do it. Fine with me. It looks like a real PITA.
No, it is not a big differance, I don’t see how spending money we don’t have on bullshit that wont effect the economy in the least bit is an economic stimulus.
Then how the fuck do you support trickle down economics and the bush tax cuts for the rich and big businesses? This is a prime example of its failures, and it was only the democrats in Congress’ fault to the extent that they didn’t actually put language in the bill to hold Paulson and the rest of the Bush economic team to their word on how the money would be spent. They’re the ones that changed course.
You just keep thinkin that little pilgrim.
edit, spending money on shit we don’t need refering to the “non-bailout” stimulus package. They need to spend the moneymore wisely. Not refering to the war. We need to elarn from the past about spending, not repeat it.
