Also, ending the tax cuts seems like a bad idea.

Right now we're worried about deflation.

The typical way to handle it is to lower interest rates.  Problem is you can't lower interest rates since they've been irresponsibly low to drive the economy into overdrive.

People want to avoid this by deficit spending like crazy... not realizing that it only makes the problem worse.

Deflation means everything is going to cost less and people will want to hold off and pay less because stuff will be cheaper as the prices drop.

The plan people want is to throw a bunch of money into the economy so people buy stuff now.

So say I wanna buy this gaming computer for 1000.  However I wait because in 6 months due to deflation it will be 800 since the computer chips will be cheaper.   The government spends a bunch of money and makes it so the computer is only 600 to me thanks to the spending stimulus.

Ok.  Now instead of thinking $800 is a fair price for the computer.  I think $600 is.  Sure the manufactuerer gets 1000 now... but once the stimulus money stops.  Guess what?  Greater deflation cause I won't buy a new computer for cheaper then 600.

The large problem with inflation is the lack of investement more then purchasing.  Why am I going to invest in computers when I  know they're going to drop in value 40% when the stimulus ends?   It was bad enough when it was 20%.  It's a simple matter of exploding the problem your trying to fix.

New investments will lead to new products and services people will want to buy, with prices that are new to people as the old products shrink in size or go through other tricks to maintain profit margins.  With the prices slowley creeping back up.

The way to fix deflation isn't going to be to spend more money.  It's going to be spending and taxing less to allow the creation of new products and services that will cause more spending.

Besides.  After the deflation Crisis we're likely to have an Inflation crisis... unlike Global warming and Nuclear Winter... they won't counter each other out.

If we aren't careful we'll end up like Japan.  On a dangerous balancing act where the slightest mistake could shoot up or drop down our currency to dangerous levels.

Great!

I thought you had left the US?!?!  Darn, I guess I was hoping for too much...giving tax cuts to 90 % of americans is a bad thing I guess...

That's what you get when the damn Stimulus Packs are $15. $15 for a mere 3 new maps! That's ridiculous.

At least that's the way I see it.

First, the obvious question, if the stimulus helped the economy recover why is unemployment so high and why are so many people convinced that we will face a double dip (or more appropriately that we never left the initial recession)?

Secondly, I would just like to point out that since the stimulus was funded through deficit spending when the spending slows down or stops it will act as an overall drag to the economy because you will have to pay interest on it; and, being that it is unlikely that the US government will every pay down any of the principle, the total negative effect from the stimulus will inevitably be several times larger than the total positive effect from the stimulus.

Just looking at the raw cost isn't everything. You have to also consider what the net effect will be to the economy in the long run. The Iraq War is paving the way for a secure oil pipeline, an allied state in the Middle-East, and (eventually) another nation of wealthy citizens embarking upon international trade. Over the decades, this will easily offset the financial cost of the war.

The stimulus package... well, it's kept a few inefficient companies afloat, it hasn't really corrected any of the fundamental flaws (and a stimulus package never will), and is causing prolonged economic turmoil. What's more, the long run inflation caused by the deficit is going to be crippling, and tending to the debts will cause decades of austerity.

I firmly believe that if we had let everything run its course naturally, we would be in the midsts of one of the strongest recoveries ever seen.

Sorry dude, but you say something like this in the same thread that you accuse me of being a shill for the republican party, is just laughable.

I think the largest non-compete contract given to Halliburton, was done by Clinton (at least at the time it was). It was also the right thing to do.

If the US government wanted to award a multi-billion dollar contract for computers with the primary OS being UNIX based, and it had be accompanied with an industry standard music player. Also, the computers needed to be metal laptops and less then an inch thick. Why would they put a bid out?

There is only one company in the world who can deliver such a requirement. Asking people to spend 10's of millions of dollars to bid on something that only one company can do, is stupid.

What Halliburton does, no one else can. It's why you give them non-compete contracts. Obama gave Halliburton a $500 million dollar non-compete contract as well, and it was the right thing to do.

Both presidents that have bookmarked Bush did the same thing as Bush, but Bush was bad for doing it and they were just fine doing it.

It's a laughable partisan argument, based on fear over logic.

On, and if you're going to try and argue that Thomas Jefferson was for big government, I got to see where this goes, because that would be the biggest re-write of american history I have ever seen.

The problem is that bankers rule the world. They can be a parasite of the economy as much as they can, but when they fuck everything, it's responsability of government to help them. They have the obligation to raise the debt of people, and, at intervals, when they overmake it, we have to pay.

Ps.: It wasn't Bush that caused this collapse, And it isn't Obama that made this stimulus plan.

There is only one thing that i surely know. The same people that caused this are the same trying to "recover" the things up.

I don't live there, so i don't have as much information as you. But is my point of view in USA situation.

Bankers should be as easy to predict as what will happen to water if you poor it down a hill. Banks will move towards profit like water finds the lowest point.

If government had not made giving out loans to those that had no business obtaining them profitable, banks would never have done it.

The government paid banks to give loans to people who legally had a right to have them. Why is that the banks fault?

See bold.  Again, you answer nothing of all the legitimate criticisms posed in your direction.  None.  Because you have no answers.