Current Economic Stimulus Plan

The creation of money is breathtaking, to say the least. If you look at the charts, you can easily see the "hockey stick" as the money supply suddenly spiked and soared a few months ago.

Remember last year when the tax rebate checks were touted as the solution to the economic crisis? That only cost a few hundred billion dollars. Well, that didn't do a whole lot for the economy.

Then last September there was a greater crisis, and the military was deployed in case Congress refused to pass the new $750 billion stimulus package. There was some foot-dragging, but in the end the Congressmen saw that they had no alternative. They were blackmailed by military threat. And, after all, passing such a bill would give government the appearance of doing something. This was designed to boost American confidence, so that they would spend more and save less.

Well, so much for that stimulus bill. They bailed out some banks and then, after promising transparency, they all clammed up and refused to say how the money was spent. You can bet on it that if they were proud of how they had spent it, the stories would have made headlines. But they knew that the truth would outrage most Americans, and that would make matters worse.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. That may be true, but it is not reality. It is a drug, a painkiller. Do we need painkillers? Perhaps, but a painkilling drug should never be mistaken for a cure. You can take a drug to relieve the pain of arthritis, but the arthritis is still there, and if you do not know this, you may have a false sense of security. Pain is a gift from God so that we know that there is a problem.

So . . . now we obviously need a stronger drug to mask our economic pain. Be it far from me to recommend anything different. But we should also recognize reality and understand that this "stimulus plan" is just that. It is like an "upper" that people take when they need more energy than they actually have. It is not a cure.

But once again we are faced with another tiny stimulus package of $800-900 billion. That's nearly a trillion. AGAIN. Now, analyst Dan Cook is telling us that the markets will crash if it is not passed. Is that reality, or is it blackmail? President Obama said that if a bill is not passed soon, the economy could go into an "irreversible" downward spiral. Wow. Is the economy really about to crash irreversibly, unless we do something? I personally believe it really IS that serious, because I see the collapse of Babylon coming. The only difference between my opinion and the President's statement is that I don't believe any stimulus bill is going to take us out of this irreversible death spiral. But if the Republicans block the bill, they will then be blamed for the ultimate collapse of the whole Babylonian system. That's a pretty good argument to pass the bill, regardless of the arguments against it. Today's AOL News article reads:

Cook said investors have been frustrated by the wrangling in Washington over the stimulus plan. Debate in the Senate is now in its fifth day.

"It basically equates to a group of firefighters showing up at a burning house and then arguing over what type of fire hose they're going to use," he said.

Cook said investors are eager for the plan to pass even if it takes time to work its way into the economy, as many economists predict.

"We just want to see a plan and have a direction," he said.

Stocks would tumble if Washington can't pass the plan, Cook said. He contends that even an imperfect effort could help shore up confidence among consumers. Their spending accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. Consumers' reluctance to open their wallets since the fall has acted like a huge weight on the economy.

"If we then fail to come up with anything today or Monday we could really see the bottom fall out," Cook said, referring to the stock market.

http://money.aol.com/marketnews/article

Now that the government's Plunge Protection Team has been established and thoroughly tested, someone has figured out that it can be used for purposes of congressional blackmail. Of course, it is difficult to prove this, because the PPT does not publish its purchases on the stock market. I heard years ago that it amounted to trillions of dollars each day, but I have no idea how accurate those figures are.

But one thing is certain. Mr. Cook is making it clear to Congress that they had better pass the bill, or else the PPT will stop buying stock to prop up the economy. That in itself would cause the market to go down thousands of points to its true level of value.

Then we would see the economic arthritis for what it is. Without painkillers.