Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Obama signs Porkulus, Stock Market thanks his deified efforts by tanking...again

Wow, with all of these "bold" initiatives we're getting from the Messiah and Co., I'm wondering if we'll have an economy left by the end of the year...

"President Obama on Tuesday signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law.
But he's far from being able to declare "mission accomplished."
"Today does not mark the end of our economic troubles," Obama said before signing the bill at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. "But it does mark the beginning of the end - the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs; to provide relief for families worried they won't be able to pay next month's bills; and to set our economy on a firmer foundation
.' "

First part is a prize understatement. The second part...well he's right about one thing. It is probably the beginning of the end. So spending gobs of money on pork will create jobs, how? As for relief, my question is how these "families" got into the financial messes that they did? Once again, are the responsible going to pay for the chronically irresponsible? I wouldn't bet against it. As for setting it on a firmer foundation, the stock market dropped 298 points today and has not recovered since Pretty Boy Geithner had his infamous "I dunno" speech last week. So where is this crack economic team that the media gushed about only a couple months before?

"Indeed, even though debate over the legislation was fraught with partisan fighting and what some characterize as strategic missteps by the nascent administration, getting the law passed was the easy part."

Ok, let's break CNN's brilliance down on this part. It was "fraught with partisan fighting", which sounds an awful lot like "those asshole Republicans wouldn't play ball, so it screwed things up." It might be me, but perhaps the Republicans (who recently found their balls now that they've pretty much lost control of the government) saw a whole lotta stuff in this package that was utter bullshit and decided that they wanted no part of it. A lot of it also revolved around this strange good cop/bad cop strategy by the Messiah, Speaker Bimbette and Senator Dirty Harry. One moment, they're pining for unity and bipartisanship to the public and the next they're telling Republicans that they don't matter (which, I hate to say is largely true). The Democrats wanted the Republicans to provide cover for them in case this blew up in their faces and the latter rightly called it for what it was and refused to play ball.

"Far more difficult will be gauging whether the legislation's trademark initiatives - which include improving physical infrastructure, investing in energy projects and providing financial relief for families by way of tax cuts and increased government benefits -- are really doing the trick.
The first step is to stem the recession in the near term. In the longer term it will be to put the economy on a path to sustained growth and greater efficiencies in energy production, health care and other areas.
So how will we know if it's working? What will be the signs? The president and economists say the biggest marker will be an improvement in the jobs picture.
"That's bottom-line number one, because if people are working, then they've got enough confidence to make purchases, to make investments," Obama said last week before the bill's passage. "Businesses start seeing that consumers are out there with a little more confidence, and they start making investments, which means they start hiring workers. So step number one, job creation
.' "

Well, depending on what one reads, the recession could end at the end of this year, early next year or keep on going. If it ends in a year or so, the Democrats will take the credit whether they earned it or not (I say, hell no). However, it's one thing to simply end a recession. It's quite another thing for the economy to grow. If the economy simply stagnates, that's not going to help much either. However, many economic experts also thought that the bottom of the market would be about 8,000. As of today it's under 7,600, not really a good sign (though it can bounce back). I'll be interested to see how the market does tomorrow.

Can it work? I'm not a big advocate of hiking up taxes (which will happen) or printing tons of money to create inflation (which will also happen). My guess is that it might do a little good, but more likely it'll be a colossal waste of money (just like the bailout package, and how much money from that was lost again?...). But hey, we Americans keep falling for this nonsense, so it's our own damn fault.

On the bright side, GM & Chrysler need only another $21.6 billion to keep shoring up their disaster. I wonder how much all of these little payments will add up to in a couple of years?

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