Our next fearless leader has a package, and he wants to push his package through Congress like NOW. He has a bold plan to stimulate every last person and business in this country, because the way things are going, we need it. In fact, he is so dead-set on stimulating us that he threatened to make the recession last for many years, with his recession powers, if we do not just lie back and “let it happen”. The president-elect also indicated that he is willing to slip us all roofies and stimulate us that way if that is what it takes. Speaking at George Mason University earlier today, Obama began his speech by saying “Dis a nice economy you got here, be a shame if some accident were to befall it.” and nodded at two towering gentlemen in black suits standing by either exit, who then each set a $50 on fire.
Once his impressive package has been passed, we are all going to have green jobs manufacturing solar panels and windmills, the entire country will be lit with love and compact flourescent light bulbs, and we will be loaning China money because we are going to have more of it than any of us know what to do with. After that Utopia is reached, I don’t know what we’ll do with the rest of 2009.
Bourgeois Nerd // Jan 8, 2009 at 3:59 pm
I sense a touch of sarcasm here. Just a soupcon.
Seriously, what’s the LOLFed-approved stimulus package? What’s wrong with his, how could it be better, etc., etc. all that boring, serious stuff.
TonyS // Jan 8, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Agreed. At this point we’re really really fucked. Either the new guy’s plan is better than doing nothing, or doing nothing is the best course of action we have at this point.
If we can improve on that plan, letters need to be written to our congressmen like NOW. You have my email, but I know fuckall about economics, so I wouldn’t know what to write.
Jason // Jan 8, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Oh, we don’t have any ideas, and even if we did I doubt alyx and I would agree on whether those ideas were good ones. I figure what he’s doing is good enough because, whether or not it works, it’s more of a plan than giving Treasury access to nearly a trillion dollars to do with what it pleases.
I might even like it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to mock it, because that is what we do here. Besides, if this is going to be our prevailing economic policy for the next few years, I want to be sure to get my jabs in early before all the good jokes are taken.
Jason // Jan 8, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Plus, you know, I am not above making a bunch of completely gratuitous “package stimulus” cracks.
TonyS // Jan 8, 2009 at 4:52 pm
lol “I’ll package stimulate your crack!”
Shine on, you crazy diamond… I’m just genuinely curious as to what a Really Really Good Plan™ might look like.
Master Blaster // Jan 8, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Who run Bartertown?
alyx // Jan 8, 2009 at 5:32 pm
I can’t even find a straight answer for what is in the thing, and that’s my complaint with it. I assume it will be roughly in line with the agenda he campaigned on and will thus include lots of uses of the words “green” and “shovel-ready” but other than that I am out of the loop.
I did read something about imposing windfall-profits taxes to fund “energy relief” stimulus checks during a period of energy-price deflation. How can ya go wrong with that?
Jason // Jan 8, 2009 at 7:54 pm
All I can figure is that it’s not completely written yet – the part about enabling judges to alter mortgages was being considered for inclusion – so that’s why there are only generalities out there right now. I would like to see it and determine how, exactly, it is going to benefit me.
And then mock it.
alyx // Jan 8, 2009 at 8:07 pm
I have no debt and generally pay copious taxes, and am not the type anyone would ever call “shovel-ready,” so I’m pretty sure I’ll be straight-on with the mocking no matter what is in there.
Lolo, ESQ // Jan 8, 2009 at 9:57 pm
shovel ready pays my bills
pants // Jan 8, 2009 at 11:23 pm
alyx, actually i read something in some random energy newsletter that Obama has reversed his position on a windfall profits tax, since oil and natural gas prices have fallen so drastically since the summer. no idea if that’s the case or not, but that’s what the trade press tells me.
yeah i
pants // Jan 8, 2009 at 11:24 pm
crap. i hit submit on accident. i was going to say i agree that i feel the same way about his proposed stimulus–just vague ideas of “infrastructure” and “new green energy” is all i’m getting, but hopefully there is a plan somewhere…
baychev // Jan 9, 2009 at 2:28 am
why windfall profit taxes only on energy companies?
those should apply to hedge funds and all executives who can’t explain how their companies made money, which will cover at least 90% of them.
if we are going to be politically correct and socially aware, let’s go all the way. tax lottery gains this way too!
scott // Jan 9, 2009 at 2:53 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tgm7v284JI
Alden Bugly // Jan 9, 2009 at 7:08 am
Speaking of “shovel ready”, a lot of these vague proposals really only shoveling the sh*t to us since there are no concrete ideas I have seen thus far. Perhaps he will simply smite the earth with a magic wand and wind turbines will spring forth.
TonyS // Jan 9, 2009 at 9:44 am
I hate to be the only optimist here, but I have an alternate explanation for no details yet: he doesn’t want to let the enemy know what he’s doing.
Once the political opponents know what’s in the plan, they can start lobbying and bribing and whatnot in congress to stop the thing. Right now they don’t know exactly WHICH good ideas to badmouth.
So if he really is trying to get this stuff through Congress RIGHT NOW, then best strategy would be to keep everything underground until the last second, then shove it through before the GOP knows what the fuck just happened.
Paul T // Jan 9, 2009 at 10:41 am
Obama’s plan is nothing but a newer “New Deal.” Funny, people who lived through the Depressions Era (many of them) think FDR saved the country. In fact, we are still dealing with the adverse ramifications of his New Deal fiasco.
But please, we just gave $800 billion to the very crooks who brought us this mess in the first place—the bankers—without even requiring much in the way of transparency in their transactions. The inflationary practices of the Federal Reserve have been discredited. Free Trade has been discredited. The entire banking architecture is in effect a PONZI scheme as the banks loan money that isn’t even theirs and never have at any one time the resources to pay back those loans if they were to be called in. I see this as nothing more than a continuation of the failed Keynesian concept. Austrian school economic makes much more sense to me. Bone up on Ron Paul.
Real change? If I ran my business like the U.S. government runs its business, I’d be out of business.
So really, since we have the printing presses running all day and night, and our children and grand children will never be able to pay off this debt, I say, “What’s another trillion dollars”?
Jason // Jan 9, 2009 at 10:48 am
Meh, I never joined the rLOVEution on purpose. I don’t believe for a second that the concept of limited and uninvolved government is feasible in the current global economy, or the recession hovering over everything we do. What’s “right” and what’s pragmatic are two completely independent concepts.
Porlock Junior // Jan 9, 2009 at 1:20 pm
The total wrongness of that “shovel ready” idea has me a bit confused. Last year, when there were Republicans in power who were determined to do nothing about it, this country was full of decayed infrastructure that needed to be fixe now, or preferably yesterday. I thought this was what that popular kenning referred to.
Now — less from lolfed’s bit of snark than from comments here and everywhere — with a change in party and a guy who expresses determination to get the fixes under way, it turns out that’s all bullshit. Odd. I know it’s not a conspiracy to prevent anything from getting done because wallowing is so much fun; in fact, I have avoided the usual phraseology of “Now the very same people…” because I don’t know that that’s true. Still, a funny coincidence.
Driven across any bridges in Minnesota lately?
Porlock Junior // Jan 9, 2009 at 1:31 pm
baychev may need to reconsider that proposal. You make all the experts explain where the profits are coming from, and you’ll bring down thousand of Madoffs all at once. Can we stand the strain?
The WSJ had a pretty good article on irrational behavior, including that of the author, an expert on the subject who lost 30% of his retirement to Madoff. I have been reading about the visible signs of wrongness in Madoff’s operation because my complacent confidence in my own good sense has been shaken by events, and I really don’t want to fall into traps, so I pick out the sort of things that ought to tip me off.
BTW there was of course one major no-brainer there — but would I have thought of it? — in Madoff’s gigantic operation’s failure to have its billions in the care of a known and reliable custodian. Duhh!
But the other impressive warnng to me was how everybody was impressed by the success of Madoff’s wonderful algorithms, which no one else could figure out. Arrant bullshit! Anybody recommends a nostrum as a good place for your money, and you reach for your Browning. It can’t be done over years unless all the rest of Wall Street is even stupider than I think it is. So I’m personally safe from the particular hysteria of following the Secret of the Genius; but a bunch of customers of brilliant money managers aren’t, which is why baychev’s proposal may cause too suden a collapse. Good idea, though.
alyx // Jan 9, 2009 at 1:34 pm
“Shovel-ready” is entirely too vague. There are plenty of projects that can be funded using this term that would create construction jobs in the short term without having any long-term utility. For example, the city of Orlando is preparing to ask for something like $30 bn from Obama, in large part to fund an arena and arts center, neither one of which anyone in this city will attend, and a light rail, which no one will use because we have what is probably some kind of record-setting suburban sprawl and it is impossible to service an area like this with an expensive rail. If projects like this are what is funded as “shovel-ready” – then I am, at best, not a fan. (Now, the construction of roads and bridges – “Bridge to Nowhere” notwithstanding – is not something I would complain about.)
And “green” initiatives, those I fully expect to be smoke and mirrors, though I am sure LoLo is sending off those plans to put windmills on the roof of Goldman Sachs right now.
Jason // Jan 9, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I thought the light rail was another way to get money for its part of the light rail project that Jeb finally convinced Florida that it didn’t want. Or is it still that?
alyx // Jan 9, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Hmm… I know the state and federal $ is already in place for the project so you’re probably right that this is Orlando’s plan for how they’re going to cough up the local 25%.