I can only answer what I think would have happened economical, as it's extremely hard to know foreign policy wise.

1. Not much yet. economically, we didn't spend that much in the grand scheme of things. Because we were in a war (not saying we should have been), we spent money on things we needed. Spending money on required services is a good thing actually. The only time it's bad, is when you can't afford it. We can't afford in, but we have not paid that price yet. Once everything come crashing down (and it will), you can look at the 10's of trillions worth of debt that caused it, and contribute the 700-800 billion we spent that we didn't have towards that fall.

2. The biggest issue with the spending bill we have done both with Bush in his last year, and Obama sense, is that how we spent it made things worse, not better. GM should be gone. Chrysler should be gone. Goldman Sachs should be gone. 100's of banks that operated at high risk, should have been forced to pay the price for that risk.

Instead, they have been rewarded for there risky behavior. Same with many other companies. When the Government tries to game the market, what they do in the end never works. It never has.

What do I think would have happened? We would have gone to a 15% unemployment in less then a year, and hundreds of companies would have failed. But then we would be on a path of growth. Real growth, because every company succeeding, was doing do because they had a product or service that people needed. There would be nothing artificial about it. People who still had there jobs, would know they were very secure in them. They would spend money. Today, even people with jobs don't want to buy a house or car, because they don't know if they will have a job in 6 months. Hell, it's hard to get a loan, because the banks don't know if your going to have a job either.

Time is money, and the longer we try and keep from crashing, the longer we lose that time. We would be trillions better if we crashes as fast as we can, and climb up. Far better then taking 10 years to crash, like we are on the path to doing. That's 9 less years of prosperity.

you make it sound like crashing is something you just get back up from,, no, crashing would be permanent, we wouldn't recover, what would happen is the country and eventually the world would end up trapped a deflationary spiral downwards, to the point where we would be looking at the Great Depression as a time of plenty

Contrary to what the pundits would have you believe, the economy is growing, slowly yes, but growth is growth, we are in a far better position that we would have been had the government not acted like it did

Explain how you think government stimulus actually prevents a deflation spiral.

It's just replacing a credit bubble burst.  With a government stimulus bubble burst.

There is always a double dip because your just creating another bubble that will burst again.

You have the same issue.   That's why the economy double dips.

Politics. I'll take my leave.....Canada is awesome

actually, I'm going to stay out of anything political, and I hate off topic forums, edited

But your tone says that you assume that the two dips will equal a greater negative impact than one larger dip all at the one time.  Mafoo argues the same in his last post.  Just let everything crash and then immediately start recovering.

Huge dips versus gradual ones arguably are less able to be coped with and absorbed by larger numbers of people and perhaps a country as a whole.  For example, is a steady downward march in the stock market worse for a total of 20% loss in value worse than a 17% one-week crash?  I'd argue not.

Had we allowed the economy and businesses to bottom out instead of infusing cash in to the system, we could have been facing much worse than we are.  We'll never know for sure, but the global economy and ours in particular was in real danger in late 2008 and again in early 2009.  

You can't cure the people's cancer if you let them bleed to death in the meantime.  

That's because... it IS worse.  You aren't facing too gradual dips.

You are facing the first dip... and then a dip that could end up being just as bad as the first.

Additionally, you are setting yourself up for future dips.

You aren't saving anyones lives.  You are treating the symptoms without treating the root cause.

It's like treating heroin withdrawl with heroin.

The problem isn't the withdrawl.  It's the addiction that caused the withdrawl.

If you want a cancer based analogy.  It's like removing a tumor in parts but leaving in the surrounding cancerous cells... with the risk as well of the cancer spreading between each operation.

When the Banks were failing... new banks were already taking their place.  New banks were opening, new credit unions.  People saw the banks falling and a lot of people saw oppurtunity to do it better.

Instead, nobody is really going to get the chance, because doing things irresponsibility if your big enough will cause you to get bailed out... repeatidly.  Meaning we're going to have the same problems over and over and over again.

The best analogy of all reminds me of something Charles Barkley said.

"I don't have a gambling problem.  I'm rich!

It's just a matter of keep spending more money to support risky, and more important bad gamblers.

I wish off topic forums didn't appear in the hot topics list..

It might also take 20 years to see how well the stimulus truly did.  However we'll still be paying for the war in 20 years.  In 50 years and Probably much longer.  Not the huge numbers of today but we'll still be paying for all the vets who got killed or were injured in the war.   Heck were still paying for a vet from WWI

Actually, no.

Putting money into a single economy has an effect that can be measured in a few years because there is a constant. Within that system, money pouring in and out is measured and the effects are easy to count.

Helping out another economy cannot be judged until the fruition (or lack thereof) has been accurately measured. When that economy involves another culture, atmosphere, etc. then it takes more time.

Or maybe you think the Korean War was a waste of time versus the minor wars America fought in Asia.

The denizens dictate these wars, not the west. We only enable them to change their lives. Whether that happens or not depends on what the people want for themselves.