stimulus 1 year later

[LegalSmash]

US citizens and residents: state your opinions...

Has it worked?

[Italian Jew]

Can't really say if it has or hasn't because:

A) Personally haven't been affected too much nor have witnessed much outside my school area and my home neighborhood (which is in Northern Virginia, so there is already a ton of money)

B) Haven't heard anything useful on ANY news channel or site because the politicians are all acting like they are still running against each other for office.



I discovered this site though. Anyone interested can see where the money is going and the timeline on which they will release further information. I think it only applies to the February stimulus bill though.

http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx

[PotshotPolka]

The nature of the stimulus package (and Keynesian market policies) has more variables than imaginable. The primary ones of the stimulating the economy are money multipliers, lag, and in reality, earmarks.

Money multipliers are essentially the attempt to ascertain how much the money will impact the GDP. It's rather hard to track, seeing as how the money can be used in many different processes, be it direct transaction or investment. The idea is to hit as close as possible to ascertained "point" at which the stimulus funds will cover contractions.

Lag: Congressional action takes a while. Fuck, it takes a LONG time, see the Health care bill for details. The amount of time taken to pass this legislation can often end up making the stimulus infusion take place after the economy has already ceased contracting, and is in recovery, and can directly correlate with booms following the recessions, which in return deflate sometimes violently into recessions. Also, the money doesn't simply appear. There is a misnomer that the checks in your mail were the stimulus package, but they were only a sliver of the percentage. The real stimulus money went largely to keeping education from going belly up and to work/construction/project grants. These programs take a while to go into action due to scheduling and logistics, and will not impact the economy in the famous "priming the pump" manner.

Lastly, there is obvious disparity within the bill for where this stimulus money goes. When the bill was shot down the first time, it went to the Senate and came back 200 pages longer, and passed. The additional two hundred pages were essentially, pork. Pet projects called earmarks that are secured by House members for their districts. Such earmarks and promises like being promoted to the head of internal committees (or vice versa the threat of being denied such an appointment) is used by both parties to secure unsure Congressmen's votes.


I could also give the straightforward answer on why a very large cadre of economists opposed the legislation: Inflation. It is widely accepted that in the long run, injecting money into the economy will have little to no perceivable results, as inflation will catch up with our precious stimulus checks. Studies on the short run results of the effects vary, and are sketchy, since its extremely difficult to track spending, and in the end most of it comes down to citing consumer reports and polls on opinions.


I could also get onto the issue that concept of recessions are purely monetary phenomenom, since regional, commodity based, and politically based fluctuations in trade and markets can all be compensated for (with the exception of certain commodities i.e. inflexible commodities: oil). Recessions revolve around perception. Perception shapes decisions. Decisions decide what people spend on.


"But the financial crisis-"

Financial system =/= Monetary system =/= Macroeconomics

The financial crisis is a completely different animal, caused by completely different policies and rules in trade. I'm not going to argue the merits or needs of those that the policies were shaped for, and I'm well aware of the disparity in mortgage deals between whites and minorities which has been proven empirically. What happened until Clinton wasn't particularly inefficient, since allot of the people receiving those loans were being blockaded by private companies, and were just as capable of repaying loans for the most part, since the initial rules were actual very stringent. Essentially during the Clinton Admin the training wheels fell off, and in 99 the primary governers for subprime loans were removed. Now add the dotcom bubble, add the boom that followed it, housing boom, and watch the number of subprime loans EXPLODE.

On an unrelated note, oil prices hit $140+, and demand was fairly inflexible (especially in business/government areas). Essentially this was the trigger for the deflation of property value, since spending dropped rapidly, foreclosures increased, demand for property plummeted overnight, and banks were left holding trillions (not billions) in securities worth less than what they bought them for.

You want to hear about bailouts? People don't realize what the fuck happened, but there isn't $14,000,000,000,000 in this country, its really just $1-2 trillion moving about in a highly fluid fashion (essentially, the money multiplier effect). You cut off the avenue for debt, you cut down trade.


And no, the stimulus hasn't done shit for me. My Army grant of $40K a year for college went out the window because the funds got reallocated at the last minute.

To semi-quote FDR, "If it doesn't work, the people will atleast go to the polls saying I tried harder than the other fucker."

[phatman76]

the stimulus is largely an example of a principle a 19th century french economist once talked about - "the seen and the unseen." I can't remember his name and I am feeling belligerent, so somebody else can figure it out. His example was breaking windows. In keynsian fashion, some villagers decided to break all the windows in town to create business (we see our money work). What they did not realize, however, was that the money spent to fix the windows would have been spent in ways that better helped people anyways (even savings accounts get invested by banks, no matter what you do unless you bury your money in a field, it cycles through the economy). In fact, fixing the windows diverted spending and investment from real needs in the community, so farmer bill couldn't get the loan to add a new grain field to his land.

Now multiply this by a 9 billion. The government breaks 900 billion dollars worth of "windows" and spends money to fix them. The money will immediately come from foreign and domestic bond purchases and investment, and partly from taxes. The money spent on bonds could have been spent by investors on real investments that are more efficient and more effective because of their free market nature than investing in the government. But we would not have seen that. We would have only seen what the government spent. Therefore we think the government is creating 2 million jobs, when in reality those jobs would have been created no matter what, the investors would have invested in something else no matter what.

If the government takes the money out of thin air, by printing it, we create a whole other slew of problems by fucking our currency to shit. Needless to say, things get messy.

So, I feel the stimulus has been a waste of attention, time, money and our rights. We need to restructure our national finances and get our shit in order, or else our children will have some serious problems. The stimulus does nothing to fix this, and in fact only worsens the situation.

The recession cannot be fixed by stimulus.

The financial crisis, on the other hand, was really a crisis. Caused in part by bad lending practices and by odd government regulations that allowed people to trust securities that were not trustworthy, the financial wizards and washington created the clusterfuck of the decade. Action here was necessary, but maybe not as much as we took. In addition, the government took some actions with banks and executives that I feel could dangerously breach our liberties. We need to shut down Fannie and Freddie for good and let real banks take care of land and business, not implicitly backed government sponsored corporations.

[Red]

Not when it costs $71K+ to create each of these new jobs.

[Lordcrazy]

not really still lots of people unemployed... if itt did work it would be flooded all over the news...

[Red]

not really still lots of people unemployed... if itt did work it would be flooded all over the news...

I keep hearing that it "Saved us from the brink".

Never mind unemployment is higher than he said it would ever go with the Stimulus.

[Repeat]

I hated it. Still do.

[LegalSmash]

As a person hired directly through stimulus money, I can tell you its put to work a lot of educated people that were unable to get work due to the glut in the economy... or were not being paid anywhere near the actual value of their work. Its allowing me to buy a house, pay my loans, and contribute to the economy, something I could not do in the current private sector market. On top of this I pay my taxes. I may not be rich in this business, but it pays well enough for me to be comfortable, and gives me excellent experience.

[PotshotPolka]

As a person hired directly through stimulus money, I can tell you its put to work a lot of educated people that were unable to get work due to the glut in the economy... or were not being paid anywhere near the actual value of their work. Its allowing me to buy a house, pay my loans, and contribute to the economy, something I could not do in the current private sector market. On top of this I pay my taxes. I may not be rich in this business, but it pays well enough for me to be comfortable, and gives me excellent experience.

Whats the work for then?

[LegalSmash]

attorney work fed govt

[Lordcrazy]

well i can officially tell you the stimulus definitely didnt work out the right way actually it made it worse. My dad got laid off October 31st and now we are moving to Texas Federal Government bitches.

[Italian Jew]

well i can officially tell you the stimulus definitely didnt work out the right way actually it made it worse. My dad got laid off October 31st and now we are moving to Texas Federal Government bitches.

They're going to love you in Texas.

*points at your avatar*

[PotshotPolka]

well i can officially tell you the stimulus definitely didnt work out the right way actually it made it worse. My dad got laid off October 31st and now we are moving to Texas Federal Government bitches.



lol, shortsighted Commie, its for the good of the people.

[Slavic]

Been seeing a lot of construction projects all over my state and its neighbors. Whole tracks of highway and local roads are being dug up and repaved, as well as much needed lanes added to certain roads and highways.

There is also major work being done in Philadelphia and neighboring Delaware. Most of this construction seems to have just sprung up within the past few months so it is pretty recent.

Besides infrastructure, which was one of the areas promised to receive money and improvement from the stimulus, I haven't seen much improvement in any other sector. Businesses have stopped shutting down and are starting to experience a pick up in their customer activity but they are still limiting their hieing practices.

This is happening big time in the Casino industry which is one of the primary industries in south jersey. Customer attendance is up and profits have been for the most part stabilized, but there has been hundreds if not thousands of job cuts or downgrades. Such cuts have effected my family and a good deal of friends.

[Lordcrazy]

lol, shortsighted Commie, its for the good of the people.

ya ima steal all of their money after i earn their trust :D