Thanks to Wikicommons and Philip Kromer.

We at US Democrazy have been hearing a clunk clunk cha-ching sound every time we go out for a drive. Sounds like a bad transmission. We’d sell the heaving hunk of junk… but no one would buy it… unless your name is Uncle Sam!

That’s right, that clunk clunk cha-ching is the sound of Americans swapping in their old junk box cars for 4,500 federal greenbacks towards a BRAND NEW CAR!!!

You too can trade in your old gas guzzler for government money towards a new set of wheels through the Car Allowance Rebate System, popularly called Cash for Clunker.

Now before you get to excited some small print applies.

1. The car being traded in must be less than 25 years old.
2. The car being traded in must get less than 18 miles per gallon.
3. The car being traded in must be drivable.
4. The car being traded in must be yours (that’s right, put your neighbors car back).
5. Don’t have any emotional attachment to you old car as all traded in cars are scrapped.

Sounds like a great deal?  Well it seems many American’s think so.  The rate of new car sales for the past two weeks has been double of that for the first half of 2009.

In fact the program has been so popular it has run out of the $1 billion dollars set aside to pay for the clunkers!

Don’t worry though, the program is still going and Congress has passed a law providing $2 billion more for Clunkers.

Oh, by the way crummy car collectors may love this program but not everyone shares this sentiment.

An opinion article in the Wall Street Journal commented

The subsidy won’t add to net national wealth, since it merely transfers money to one taxpayer’s pocket from someone else’s, and merely pays that taxpayer to destroy a perfectly serviceable asset in return for something he might have bought anyway. By this logic, everyone should burn the sofa and dining room set and refurnish the homestead every couple of years.

The chaps over at the Economist, however, seemed to like this program saying

The boost in demand that the rebates have brought about is exactly the sort of stimulus that is urgently needed

Rick Newman, blogging for US News & World Report, warns that, as the cars traded in under the program must be destroyed,

there will even be a used-car bubble, with a shortage now leading used-car dealers to stock up on inventory. But when the clunker rebates end, dealers could end up with too many cars, causing prices to seesaw the other way.

Frankly we don’t care what those “experts” have to say.  What we really want is your complaints and snide remarks well voiced discourses and comments.

P.S.  We just called our mechanic and that clunk clunk cha-ching is our transmission.  $4,500 dollars here we come!