Posts Tagged ‘Stimulus’
Thanks to Wikicommons.
Candles, cake, and intense political debate, what else would anyone want for their first birthday? Especially if that special someone is the Federal economic stimulus bill!
Now, like most birthday celebrations (except for ours which you forgot) a variety of “gifts” and “wishes” have been flying in.
Led by President Obama, folks are trumpeting the stimulus as a success.
But for all the birthday cheer, there was also a load of Bronx cheers.
Some are questioning whether the bill actually helped the economy, particularly Republicans (who didn’t approve of the stimulus from day one). …read more.
Thanks to the AP and Philly.com
We at US Democrazy partied hard this weekend. No, we weren’t indulging in festive Halloween high-jinx! We learned THE RECESSION IS OVER! Yeah BABY!
Just check out these headlines:
- Ford Posts an Unexpected Profit of $997 Million (New York Times)
- 3 strong economic reports lift recovery hopes (The Associated Press)
- Manufacturing boosts global recovery (The Financial Times)
Everything is looking great, right? Time to Party!
But, then today… we woke up with a pounding headache. It wasn’t a hangover, it was some gloomy economists who ruined our party mood.
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.
- The car being traded in must be less than 25 years old.
- The car being traded in must get less than 18 miles per gallon.
- The car being traded in must be drivable.
- The car being traded in must be yours (that’s right, put your neighbors car back).
- 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!
Is it to early to measure the stimulus’ effects ?
Sick of BORING in-flight safety videos? Fly Air New Zealand. The airline’s staff wear nothing but body paint during a flight safety video to attract passengers’ attention and hopefully save lives.
It seems like every old blues song starts with “I woke up this mornin’”… followed by any of a number of sad statements. “My baby is gone…. My dog has up and died… My toaster’s blown up…”
These days, the that follow up phrase might just be “My economic stimulus package is showin’ some promise”…
That’s because folks are waking up and seeing some positive effects of the Obama stimulus bill down in good ol’ Mississippi. Mississippi has been singing the economic blues long before the “recession” and housing market collapse happened. But Kevin Connolly at the BBC says that the Magnolia State may be playing a different tune soon.
According to Connolly’s article (which you can find here), the stimulus plan is helping Mississippi to bolster its tourism industry. The state is focusing on its rich musical and blues history. Head on over to BBC to read and sing the whole scoop!
Who says the bailout doesn’t have something for everybody? Just ask OneUnited Bank.
Still stupified on the stimulus for the states…? Maybe The Boston Globe can help you out.
They say no man is an island… Except for this guy. He is, in fact, a country.
The great Madoff rip-off! Bernie may spend MUCH more than a weekend… in prison.
Wal-Mart takes advantage of the government… Well, the government’s money, at least.
Do we have to check our vision… or did the market actually just go up?
Budget cuts will keep us from talking about the past, according to The Onion.
Image courtesy of New York Magazine.
Is the stimulus plan going to plan?
Time to skimp on indulgences, unless you’re Catholic!
The Economy is pointing down… North Korea is pointing missiles!
Fruit flies with funny names stir up controversy. (But what doesn’t stir up controversy these days?)
Photo courtesy of whitehouse.gov
Maybe we ought to pity our politicians every once in a while. Okay, okay, before you start throwing rotten tomatoes, hear us out. We at USDemocrazy have noticed, and some other smart people have too, that U.S. politicians engage in a “permanent campaign”. This is when elected officials use the same kind of campaign tactics that we saw (and saw and saw) during the eternal 2008 campaign to gain support for bills or policy measures while in office.
These guys ( and we citizens) just never catch a break between elections…. but that’s probably a good thing!
President Obama had to do just that today, flying ALL the way out to Indiana, to hold what looked remarkably like a campaign rally. Bt this time he wasn’t trying to rally votes from citizens, but was really trying to rally support for the stimulus bill (we found the video of it for you, and posted it above). He then flew ALL the way back to Washington, just to talk more stimulus. Phew!
Scott McClellan (who used to work in, later to be shunned by, the George W Bush White House) wrote in his book What Happened about this so-called permanent campaign. He talked about how old GWBush had to campaign around the country for bills he was trying to get passed in Washington. Clearly, that is one thing the Obama folks like about their predecessor!
The guys at RealClearPolitics.com helped us understand more about this permanent campaign, because they probably figured we all need to understand why we have to put up with — er, listen to politely – all the stuff politicians say in between the actual campaigns.
