The European Union is threatening a trade war over provisions in the $800 billion “stimulus” package backed by Obama and Congressional leaders. The Great Depression resulted partly from the trade war that followed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff signed into law by Herbert Hoover, which Congressional leaders wrongly thought would help end the recession that followed the 1929 stock market collapse.
The stimulus package also contains tons of red tape and strings attached to the money it showers on state governments, in order to benefit big labor unions, like “prevailing wage” mandates that result in taxpayers paying inflated wages for construction projects. Economists have recently described how red-tape misguidedly imposed during the Roosevelt Administration lengthened the Great Depression by as much as seven years.
The “stimulus” package is losing favor among economists and the general public. Only 42 percent of the public supports it, and most independents oppose it, according to pollster Rasmussen Reports. And even economists who once supported the idea of a stimulus (like Martin Feldstein, the pro-bailout economist often cited by Congressional leaders to support bailouts and the need for a “stimulus”) turned against the bloated stimulus package when its pork-filled contents were revealed. Many economists oppose the stimulus package, which is based on economic fallacies.
A similar trillion-dollar stimulus package failed in Japan in the 1990s, producing a decade of economic stagnation known as “The Lost Decade.”
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You cannot borrow your way out of debt spend your way out and you cannot make the economy grrow by pork belly spending on special projects that have nothing to do with help the economy grow.
When will the American public wake the **** up and see that Obama does not know what the **** he is doing. Just because you can give great speeches does not mean that you know what you are talking about.
Everyone is with their hand out wanting a Government check will this so call stimulus check goes to everyone even illegal alliens those who are not even a citizine of the USA.
Wake the **** up America and smell the stuipd **** the White House is feeding you.
OK, but why the picture of FDR?
Hoover and his administration are the ones who got us into the great depression and who fostered the isolationist policies. Also to "Worried": FDR's spending policies put a lot of unemployed people back to work. The big money was thrown around during WWII and it was that terrific spending event that pulled us out of the depression. Makes no sense does it? Or does it? Let's forget government a minute and think about private enterprise and what makes that work. Borrowing and spending money makes it work. If you are a contractor trying to make money and, incidentally put people to work, what you do is go out an borrow a ton of money and start building. The problem today is that everything is frozen. Banks won't lend, contractors are afraid and can't get money to build, etc. you know the drill. I know you are frustrated seeing the government spending Trillions but the private sector won't do anything. They say theat ther is something like 9 Trillion dollars sitting in bank accounts and money markets right now but no one in the private sector offers to do a **** thing to help our country get on its feet. Even in the days of the Great Depression there were the Rockefellers and other millionaires were loaning the government money so that we could keep going. Today the fat cat billionaires are just sitting around counting what's left of their shrinking hedge funds. The point is that today, as in the depression days, everything came to a halt because we were all stuffing our money in mattresses and counting every penny. And I definitley understand that because after losing a third of my savings (again) I am doing exactly that myself. But please tell me how sucking back into the fetal postion, letting the banks and major corporations go bankrupt and unemployment go sky high (it was 24% in the Depression)…how is that going to fix things?
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