Best way to stimulate: give money not to the banks but to the poor.* They’ll spend it. So, businesses, banks, and state sales tax coffers will end up with it anyway. But, not before the poor spend it on housing, food, and transportation. Give everyone a debit card and put $500 into it every month. It’s a safety net and a stimulus in one package.
(* To simplify administration, just give it to everyone. Don’t complicate it with phaseouts, income ceilings, etc. Those complexities waste too much space in the news and consume too much of everyone’s time.)
I don’t know that anyone could expect anything different. Debt that is out of site (personal and public), incompetent financial executives and what are and will always be the worst people to guide this country through troubled waters: our elected officials. The consumers are trying to back themselves out of problems they probably created themselves, while the other two groups are blindly dithering in a world gone bad.
Asian currencies continue to sell off vs the $ on the heels of the news yesterday that South Korea said they will look into hot money inflows stemming from the $ carry trade and the Bank of Indonesia said they are looking into the foreign buying of bills. This follows the news a few weeks ago that Taiwan was limiting foreign deposit holdings and Brazil was taxing foreign inflow transactions. As I mentioned yesterday, we may have reached a short term pain threshold in terms of $ weakness and foreign countries are fighting back as they certainly won't wait for...
February 9th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Gee, we’re broke.
Best way to stimulate: give money not to the banks but to the poor.* They’ll spend it. So, businesses, banks, and state sales tax coffers will end up with it anyway. But, not before the poor spend it on housing, food, and transportation. Give everyone a debit card and put $500 into it every month. It’s a safety net and a stimulus in one package.
(* To simplify administration, just give it to everyone. Don’t complicate it with phaseouts, income ceilings, etc. Those complexities waste too much space in the news and consume too much of everyone’s time.)
February 9th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
At this rate, just about anything is better than the useless stimulus plan.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I hate when that happens (looking at the line from left to right).
February 9th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I don’t know that anyone could expect anything different. Debt that is out of site (personal and public), incompetent financial executives and what are and will always be the worst people to guide this country through troubled waters: our elected officials. The consumers are trying to back themselves out of problems they probably created themselves, while the other two groups are blindly dithering in a world gone bad.
February 12th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Please let that money at least be going into savings