Fed officials warn weak recovery won't spur jobs

Bye Bye corporate, class politicians, corporate despotism, corporate capitlalism.....Barack take all the tea baggers with you.....you served them well....you appeased Wall Street and Empire.....and republican class thugs.

Thank You elitist crooks (R and D) for your wonderful service to the American People. We relish the day when we will have no Jobs at all and we will no longer have to fund your existence.

No, they just want to fool us into giving money to the smaller banks now. If anything fails, it will be TARP, which was started by the Republicans and continued by Obama. It would be a bipartisan failure. We injected 700B into the system. If the result is a soaring Dow, huge bonuses to Wall Street and no jobs, then that's just the way it's gonna be...not a single @!$%#ing dime more to these @!$%#es. The money is there- LEND IT! I've read this article before...

Obviously the Fed has not heard of all the jobs that are being created by the stimulus as it is being spent, that is supposed to keep unemployment down, not going up. I do not see continued high unemployment as particularly boding well for either political party, or at least not for anyone running for re-election in 2010. I know that I blame much of the problems on government policies and spending but also on people living beyond their means and taking advantage of these policies. Hopefully, when our new Congress, full of new faces, reconvenes after the elections they will get to work on legislation and tax incentives to create and encourage the creation of real, sustainable private sector jobs and they will start to reel in the spending on the federal side.

What are you going to do about it?

An Article from the Huffpo, 11/5/09

In the Obama proposal, which was released in the House last week in the form of a draft bill, the Federal Reserve would have the authority to ignore the recommendations by a firm's primary regulator (be it a bank or securities regulator) and simply impose its own standards on the firm. The Fed would also have the power to examine the firm, and force the firm to comply with those standards if necessary.

In essence, if the other regulators didn't play ball the Fed's way, the Fed could shove them aside.

Thank you Mr. Obama. I already knew that the banks basically owned our country but thankfully, you're going to make it official by giving the private fed the ability to absolutely override everyone else.

This is better known as "Government Dictatorship" or Communism, which is where we are headed in high gear, the government is and has been taking control over the American people with each new move they make where it gives them more power.

The way things have progressed in the last year it will not take more than 5 years for the people to no longer have the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution will read the way the government wants it too.

They pass laws Without the vote of the people, they make amendments to the constitution Without the vote of the people, and in fact in spite of the objections of the people, so that in essence we are already a socialist government dictatorship pushing its way to communism.

It's not government dictatorship because the Fed is private, not a government agency.

If unemployment levels in 2010, and comes down to say 8% area by 2012, it's unlikely Obama will be defeated.

Nicey,

If the unemployment rate was 8% when Barack took office, and the same or worse 4 years later, he will be defeated. He was elected to turn around the economy.

The Observer,

What's sad is that haters like you actually want the economy to get worse, in the hopes that people who are as emotionally immature as you seem to be will blame Obama for not pushing some magic button and making jobs come out of thin air.

We elected Obama for a complete change of course from the baby killer Bush, not to create jobs out of nothing in less than a year after we elected him.

Get over yourself.

I'm a hater?

Barack's anti-business policies are a disaster!

My the mid-term elections, unemployment will still be in double digits!

Obama owns the economy now!

If unemployment is at 10.2% now and it goes down to 8% by 2012, wouldn't that be turning unemployment around?

Two years to knock it down 2%?

No.

Granted, it would be preferable for it to be lower at any given time, but if unemployment is trending downward from where it is now, the fact is that it would have to be considered turned around at that point. Whether the rate of unemployment is where you or I would like it to be does not factor into that.

Nicey,

If the unemployment rate was 8% when Barack took office, and the same or worse 4 years later, he will be defeated. He was elected to turn around the economy.

Objectively, I think you're wrong. The majority of Americans place the blame for this entire situation on the previous whitehouse.

Regardless of who was in office job losses were already deep at 500-600k a month, no one was going to change that instantly. All they will ask themselves mainly is if things are better than they were in February/March of this year.

And for the majority of his supporters, on the surface, it's likely in November 2012 things will be better for them than they were at the bottom in Spring of 2009.

Two years to knock it down 2%?

No.

When unemployment peaked in 2003, it took more than 2 years just to get it down 1.3%

When unemployment peaked in 1992, it took more than 2 years to get it down 2%

Given the lack of explosive job growth available to us, it will take a while to get it lower. Previous to the Federal Reserve Takeover in 1983, almost all recessions saw quick recovery, but they also saw extremely quick downturns.

The way the economy moves today is very reflective of the financial policies of the banking sector, which is heavily influenced by the Federal Reserve. Their management of downturns produces shallower downturns and a longer time to recover (usually).

Nicey,

If the unemployment rate was 8% when Barack took office, and the same or worse 4 years later, he will be defeated. He was elected to turn around the economy.

Objectively, I think you're wrong. The majority of Americans Obama-oids place the blame for this entire situation on the previous whitehouse.

The majority of Americans Obama-oids place the blame for this entire situation on the previous whitehouse.

Polls of independent voters reveal otherwise. Easily the majority of independent voters place the blame on the previous admin.

I don't really care about your political stance. That's just the way it is.

And more and more Americans are holding Obama responsible each and every month--as they should.

That's just the way it is.

Observer- you're comments are a myopic joke. It's laughable how Republicans are sitting around waiting to see how it long it will take for Americans to forget the disaster of the Bush administration. We had a budget surplus under Clinton and you bankrupted the nation. Who knows, the American people may be dumb enough to believe you. I think you're betting on that, but I think your bet is wrong.

And if you think that Pres Obama's support of TARP Part II was anti-business you have to be smoking something pretty powerful. If anything, it's the liberals who are pissed at him for corporate whoring on TARP.

You will give the Democrats infinite time to fix the economy.

Most voters won't.

Voters for the first time are blaming President Obama nearly as much as President Bush for the country’s continuing economic problems.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 49% still blame the economic situation on the recession that began under Bush. But 45% now say the nation’s economic problems are caused more by Obama’s policies.

Just a month ago, 55% pointed the finger at Bush, while only 37% said the policies Obama has put in place since taking office were at fault. These findings had remained largely unchanged since May.

Rasmussen is a shill for the Republican party. Their polls are fixed.

Rasmussen is a shill for the Republican party. Their polls are fixed.

Not a shred of evidence to support this ridiculous and debunked talking point. And for a shill for the GOP, Rasmussen was the only pollster to correctly poll the 2008 election to its actual total for the last few weeks of the election. NO ONE POLLED MORE ACCURATE. Look at the polls and than look at the results, for the last three weeks or so Rasmussen was the most accurate with the least volatility. Wanna know why? Rasmussen ALWAYS polls likely voters. Sir, you fail. Next!

I always hear this bull@!$%# argument when I indicate that Rasmussen is fixed.

When there's an actual outcome to predict (like election results) there is no incentive to rig the poll. What are they going to do, say that McCain is going win by a landslide?????

But every other time, they rig the polls to favor the Republicans. When I first noticed this I went to their webpage and it had right-wing advertising all over it. After I made that comment, they changed the look of the homepage to make themselves a better shill.

You may be able to fool the @!$%#s that listen to Fox news, but anyone who knows anything about polling knows that they're fixed.

but anyone who knows anything about polling knows that they're fixed.

Put up or shut up. Cite a source to back up your childish claim or admit you are a little child that when confronted with results you don't like cry, "wahhh it's rigged." SHow me the money, whiner!

The Republicans have absolutely no one who can defeat him in 2012. If he's a one-termer, tell me who is going to beat him in 2012. Lets assume that unemployment goes to 50% and we find out that he's an alien from from Nebulon via Kenya. Who is going to beat him in 2012? Tell me.

I'll run...

The republicans don’t need anyone to defeat obama he defeated himself, obama is an economic disaster, either that or a skillful and cunning nation destroyer.

Either way he is the last thing this country needs in Washington and the first thing it needs to get rid of.

I'll run...

I voted! The Observer wins!

I knew I could count on your support...

Yea, that's what I thought.

Friday's jump in the unemployment rate into double digit could not have come at worse time--just before Christmas.

It will have a further chilling on retail sales.

you must be thrilled about that

Just stating a fact.

Facts seem to bother you, NP...

Facts seem to bother you, NP...

Just the ones that make BO look bad

Correct you are, Isabella. Anyone who shops at Family Dollar, Dollar General, Target, WalMart, Costco and anyplace else where foreign-made products make up more than 50% of the inventory are part of the problem. These retailers are instrumental in sucking vast billions of dollars out of the American economy for the benefit of overseas manufacturers.

The stupid people continue to be chumps for increasingly wealthy middlemen who don't actually produce anything. They believe the lobbyist-funded lies of their Congressional lackeys and show up at rallies with banners screaming socialism, communism, nazism and other "isms" about which they have no clue, wearing American flag emblazoned t-shirts that were made in China.

Our continued lust for cheap, foreign-made goods, combined with our continued ignorance about how the financial services industry works, is dragging us down. Our children and grandchildren will experience continued deterioration in their standard of living, as the wilfully ignorant among us fail and fail and fail again to address our true challenges as they look for the easy villian - as long as he's black, or gay, or non-christian.

That's the situation in a nutshell. Wal- Mart has replaced General Motors as the nations largest employer. All our manufacturing jobs have been siphoned off through NAFTA and CAFTA. Corporations would rather set up bussiness in a communist or third world country than pay American workers a decent wage. This has been in the making since the mid 80's. Find a copy of Michael Moore's " Downsize This." He forecast this years ago. Our economy will never return to what it was unless there is a infusion of middle class wage manufacturing jobs. We're in a race to the bottom.

moving jobs overseas where wages are lower is good for big business...guess who gave tax breaks to corporations for setting up shot overseas...hint..it wasn't Obama...

Good assessment.

My counter, even though I do like Obama, is he is not doing enough to take on all these issues you just mentioned.

He should be very directly telling the Fed to open up the loan market for SBA. He should make it his public stance that any banks not helping originate small business loans will come under the full weight and pressure of the bodies who regulate them.

We should not be changing mark to market rules as the Senate influenced to be done in March, we should not be enabling banks to continue to operate with 1% Cap reserve to asset ratios.

I agree, Nicey. I'm concerned that the Administration does not fully understand the depths to which the financial services business has fallen in terms of individual self-interest, rendering stimulus efforts increasingly difficult. Any remaining stimulus should go toward small and medium-sized business in the form of low interest loans and employment tax credits. Let asset values fall to market levels and support homeowners directly. It is shareholders that should be taking the brunt of their failure to keep managements in check. It is the boards of directors that should be taken to task for their short-sightedness. The financial institutions never wanted the responsibility for doing their part in maintaining a stable world economy. They should receive absolutely no benefit from the government's efforts to fix what they have destroyed.

dwillie,

You analysis appears to focus on a few of the more obscure issues and misses the major problems that led to the crisis.

The subprime fiasco was key, which was created by the initially low interest rates from 2001-2006, which went up a few percent in 2006 due to inflation. The low interest rates of course encouraged home purchases, and the rising rates hit especially the adjustable-rate mortgages hard and people could no longer afford to pay for what they bought. The government also coached the banks from the sidelines to give loans to higher-risk groups in the name of "affordable housing". The noble idea is that everyone should be able to own a home, but when you artificially open up the market to those who naturally would be unable to be a part of it, you increase risk. Also the number of homes being built until 2007 hurt demand fell while supply was increasing, weakening the value of real estate.

You are right that rating agencies misestimated the risk involved, but mostly subprime mortgages were misestimated, because large, reliable companies were buying up bundles of these. Of course everyone knows that the subprime crisis spread to the rest of the economy because risk was spread out among many institutions. Financial institutions around the world wrote off bad assets when so many US mortgages started to default.

Many things followed as a result of the subprime crisis, but that seems to be what really started everything off. Who is at fault in the housing crisis? Everyone. The people who made unwise investments. The system that views home buying as an investment to be made on credit and not a lower-risk model of purchase. The banks that indulged risky loans. The government that encouraged banks to make risky loans. Everyone would like to blame everyone else, but everyone is at fault. We need to come back down to reality.

Everdrift, the so-called "obscure" issues I point out were the precursor of the debacle to come. Financial institutions held paper they had no business holding. They could hold it because their capital requirements were lower and the instruments were unregulated. The obscurity of these issues is precisely why they were implemented. Few were watching and even fewer had a clue of the impacts and implications of these measures.

No doubt the federal government was encouraging of home purchases among those who historically did not benefit from real estate ownership. But I would submit that the impact of this encouragement is wildly overstated. The federal government controls banks, not the non-bank financial institutions from which the vast majority of subprime loans originated. Several studies into last year's financial debacle confirm that FDIC provisions such as the Community Reinvestment Act were not contributors to the problem:

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=4136

Further, far more defaults occurred in mortgages taken out by middle class people buying second homes and people speculating on real estate than they did among lower income people taking out standard mortgages for primary residences. Finally, you seem to ignore the significant prevelence of mortgage fraud that occurred among the non-bank institutions.

You are correct in stating that many people contributed to the problem. You overstate greatly, however, the impact of regulatory intervention on behalf of first-time home buyers.

dwillie,

Perhaps you are not aware of the role of HUD as a regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. HUD created quotas for these institutions that dictated what percentage of their lending was to be for subprime mortgages. I'm pretty sure this is the main reason subprime loans went from 7 percent of all mortgage loans in 2001 to 19 percent in 2006. HUD created the pressure for that market shift to happen. If you can disprove this or offer a better theory, please do.

The federal government may not "control" non-bank financial institutions, but banks aren't the only institutions that sell mortgages to Fannie and Freddie.

I'm very aware of HUD, Fannie and Freddie. I clearly acknowledge bi-partisan government interest in expanding home ownership and the efforts put forth by Fannie and Freddie to do so. But empirical evidence clearly shows that the thesis you attempt to advance wildly overstates the issue.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html

The private sector decisions of individuals, businesses and institutions brought the world to the brink of financial disaster. The ideological need to blame so called social engineering on the part of government and the more sinister need on the part of some (not you, Everdrift) to find easy scapegoats among low income and minority groups both obfuscate the most important lessons from the debacle and increase the chance that problem reoccurs.

BTW, you incorrectly assert:

HUD created quotas for these institutions that dictated what percentage of their lending was to be for subprime mortgages.

Fannie and Freddie don't lend or originate loans. They purchase and securitize mortgages originated by others.

The story you linked to has me confused. It appears to contradict itself when it says that:

"In an effort to promote affordable home ownership for minorities and rural whites, the Department of Housing and Urban Development set targets for Fannie and Freddie in 1992 to purchase low-income loans for sale into the secondary market that eventually reached this number: 52 percent of loans given to low-to moderate-income families."

And then follows up with:

"But these loans, and those to low- and moderate-income families represent a small portion of overall lending."

Obviously 52 percent is not a small portion of overall lending. Are they referring to the monetary value of these loans versus the value of lower-risk loans?

I'm aware that Fannie and Freddie securitize mortgages, I merely misworded that sentence. I meant that HUD sets goals for what percentage of mortgages they purchase are to be for lower-income groups.

I'm not at all convinced that the evidence suggests the role of affordable housing policies in the economic crisis is minor. I've read quite a bit of evidence that suggests it was a major factor. I know it's not the only factor, and I couldn't really break down exactly what caused how much, but I'm confident that it was part of the crisis. "The Housing Boom and Bust" by Thomas Sowell is a fine collection of evidence showing the centrality of housing policy to the economic cycles of this market. If you have not read it, I would recommend it as a challenge to your views.

The story does not contradict itself. You are simply applying 52% to the wrong piece of data. The quote clearly states:

"52 percent of loans given to low-to moderate-income families."

Which is a lot different than "52 percent is not a small portion of overall lending".

I don't know what percentage of overall lending went to low-to-moderate income families. But whatever that number is, Fannie and Freddie bought 52% of that - a portion of a portion, not a portion of the whole. You are buying into incorrect hyperbole.

The "blame-the-government" crowd ignores a very important point: that Fannie and Freddie purchases of subprime loans was far above goals for affordable housing, which were easily met with a handful of multi-family housing complexes. Clearly, the motivation for jumping head-first into subprime was not driven by goals, quotas, or social engineering interests. Reference after reference, study after study and analysis after analysis point to a business decision to capture market share. Here is another one if you care to read it. Here is a quote from the article:

But HUD never told Fannie and Freddie to jump into the subprime market. Both chose to dive into subprime mortgage securities, and the purpose wasn’t to satisfy regulators — it was to increase market share, Cecala said. Afterward, they asked HUD if some of the securities they purchased could count toward their affordable housing goals. HUD agreed.

Fannie and Freddie were huge players in the subprime market, buying 48 percent of all subprime-mortgage-backed securities offered in 2004 — way above anything they would ever need to meet affordable housing goals. They continued to buy loans made to multi-family dwellings, as in the past, to satisfy regulators.

Despite claims to the contrary, the two did not rely, for the most part, on subprime securities to meet their regulator’s goals. In any case, the majority of subprime loans were refinancings, which wouldn’t have counted anyway.

“Everybody and their dog had refinanced their prime-rate mortgage” by 2003, Cecala said. And there was no way to make money except by aggressively moving into subprime — meaning it was a business decision by Fannie and Freddie, not a government-mandated one.

When looking at the evidence, I conclude your confidence to be misplaced. Fannie and Freddie acted to maximize revenue and profits for their shareholders by buying as many sub-prime loans as possible, far above any goals established by HUD. Like everyone else, they tried to make more money and blew themselves up.

I may take you up on Dr. Sowell's treatise on housing, but I can't promise priority status for it on an already long reading list. I've read a couple of Dr. Sowell's works (Ethnic America is one I remember specifically) and found them more to be searches for support of pre-established perspectives than efforts to let the evidence serve as guideposts to conclusions.

I don't know what percentage of overall lending went to low-to-moderate income families. But whatever that number is, Fannie and Freddie bought 52% of that - a portion of a portion, not a portion of the whole. You are buying into incorrect hyperbole.

I see, so F&F bought 52% of the low-to-moderate income mortgages, which is itself a percentage of overall lending. That's still very significant, I don't know how you can write that off. If there was a subprime crisis, and Fannie and Freddie are sitting there holding 52% of the loans (a number subject to change according to the article in discussion) then Fannie and Freddie are an integral part of the subprime crisis. Their books suffer when subprime mortages turn toxic, and their business decisions would have an impact on the market as a whole. Bear in mind that I am asserting that the subprime crisis was largely responsible for toppling the whole stack of dominoes. Therefore the high percentage of low-income mortgage holdings by F&F becomes a cornerstone in this theory. I think you would agree with this, you would simply say that housing policy did not motivate F&F to buy so many risky assets.

Reference after reference, study after study and analysis after analysis point to a business decision to capture market share.

Thank you for making your position clear and for providing evidence to support it. I may have enough evidence to consider re-evaluating my views in a serious manner. But I would still like to point out that while I may be advocating the "blame-government first" view as you put it, you are obviously on the side of the "blame industry first" crowd. The articles you are linking to have a clear bias towards defending housing policy and assigning blame to private decision. It may well be the case, I'll need to research more, but I have to be wary of your assertions because they fit very neatly within an established ideology.

So, you'll be interested to know that I have just emailed Dr. Sowell asking him about your claims that F&F went far beyond the quotas set for them by HUD and were motivated by profits. I hope he responds. I have a lot of respect for the man!

Well, I'm attempting to email him at least. The first attempt failed so I'm trying to go through the webmaster at the Hoover institute. Wish me luck!

Hi Everdrift. I apologize for not being responding sooner. I do agree that decisions in the private sector - among borrowers, lenders, investors and yes, F&F - all helped create the global financial meltdown we experienced last year. Government did have a role as well, I just don't believe that the evidence points to "social engineering" as the culprit. Government set the stage by lowering capital requirements, eliminating regulations on derivative financial products and allowing the co-mingling of assets of varying complexity and risk under common ownership. I blame industry first because the various industry players made fatally flawed decisions on their own in the name of making more money.

Good luck on reaching out to Dr. Sowell. Though I disagree with him sometimes vehemently, I consider him to be a very accomplished man whose views must be seriously considered.

BTW, I have enjoyed our conversation.

Dwillie,

I got hold of Dr. Sowell by email. Here is what I wrote and what he wrote:

I am a great admirer of your work and have read several of your books. I recently engaged in an extended debate over the housing crisis with an apparently well-versed liberal. He made the claim that Fannie and Freddie's activity in the subprime market was not largely motivated by the need to meet quotas set by HUD, because in fact they went far beyond the quotas in their holdings of lower income mortgages. Here is what he said:

" Fannie and Freddie acted to maximize revenue and profits for their shareholders by buying as many sub-prime loans as possible, far above any goals established by HUD. Like everyone else, they tried to make more money and blew themselves up."

I have read and own your book "The Housing Boom and Bust", and I think it is a fantastic collection of evidence and lucid interpretation of the housing crisis. But I was at a bit of a loss as to how to respond to the gentleman's claim. Is his claim true? Does it weaken the position that housing policy, especially HUD regulations, were an integral part of the housing crisis?

Thank you for taking the time to read this!

Regards, Mark Ford

And the response:

Dear Mr. Ford,

Without some documented specifics to back up what was asserted, replying to this assertion with a counter-assertion would not clarify anything. Since I am currently preparing a second edition of the housing book, I would be genuinely interested in specifics.

Incidentally, you can reach me directly at my e-mail address: sowell@stanford.edu.

Thomas Sowell

So, can you provide any documented specifics for Dr. Sowell? This could be a unique opportunity, there is a chance he could revise the 2nd edition of "The Housing Boom and Bust" with your data and your argument in mind.

Spending more money now is like the fire department showing up at the fire with a can of gas, WHICH DON”T WORK, it makes it worse.

If obama had let the automakers, banks and Wall Street go under it would have hurt the country, BUT it would not have killed us, now the people are in a tax debt that will take 200 years to try and catch up with.

This insurance plan of his IS NOT GOING TO BE FREE, it doesn’t matter whether it’s 900 billion or 2.1 trillion, the tax payer is going to have to PAY THAT MONEY BACK.

Obama is not paying for this, WE ARE, congress has no vested interest in this, WE DO, You don’t SPEND, SPEND, SPEND when you Don’t have, don’t have, don’t have.

That is second grade math, the more they spend the higher taxes will go, and with hundreds of thousands out of work the tax burden falls to the rest of us.

They cannot collect taxes from people who have no income, but they sure can the rest of the people who do, sometimes you just have to STOP and live on what you got because you cannot go out and SPEND money you don’t have!

That seems to be something obama and congress don’t understand, it is beginning to look like they all flunked the sandbox at kindergarten, not just math class.

Wildcard, times like these are when increased government spending is ESSENTIAL because public demand has to take up some of the slack left by private demand.

f obama had let the automakers, banks and Wall Street go under it would have hurt the country, BUT it would not have killed us

Oh, yes it would. We were experiencing bank-runs of trillions of dollars per day - even healthy responsible banks could not withstand that kind of run for long! How is the market going to correct itself if the flow of money stops entirely?!? People tend to die in large numbers with prolonged 'corrections'.

times like these are when increased government spending is ESSENTIAL because public demand has to take up some of the slack left by private demand.

This is dangerous when you consider what public money is. Public money is either taxpayer money, newly printed dollars from the Fed, or money borrowed from other countries. Use taxpayer money to "take up some of the slack left by private demand", and wind up in the same hole you found yourself in. You rob Peter to pay Paul, but Peter is struggling right now. Print more money, and you risk Argentine inflation numbers. Borrow more money from overseas, and increase the national debt, which will probably necessitate the printing of more money to monetize the debt, which leaves you with the same problem you had with printing money in the first place.

The solution is basically to allow market corrections to take place, I believe. Cushioning the fall may be acceptable, but propping up a corpse is just a charade, a weekend at Bernie's. Bailouts are band-aids on broken legs.

Miss Ann, we vote for that unelected banking elite with every dollar we spend on an item not manufactured in the United States. You are right about one thing: this has been going on for decades.

Stop spending?! Where's this magical plan for recovery that doesn't involve spending money? Stopping spending would be DISASTROUS - who's going to make money if no one buys stuff?

The first stimulus didn't work and we can't afford another. Government needs to stay out of private business and things will get better, But with redistribution of wealthcare and cap and trade it ain't going to happen.

Yes, it did work, it just wasn't big enough, and we cannot afford NOT to spend more. Where did you learn about macroeconomics? If Government allowed the bank-runs of 2008 to continue as they did, the financial system would have totally collapsed and we'd be in depression.l

Your of the Biden School of economics aren't you More Than Happy!

Got to spend money to lose money, then they can raise taxes!

It's supply and demand - if demand crashes, supply won't make any money. It's how we got out of the Depression - the funding of a great deal of public works projects, which then gets spent upon food, shelter, medicine, recreation, etc. When they insisted upon a balanced budget in such a crisis, that dragged out the Depression for another 3 to 5 years.

So what has the Stimulus, around 1/4 of the total has been spent on, to get supply and demand going?

Where did the TARP Money go? Hasn't that one still been waiting in the wings to be spent?

If there are any incomes left to tax.

More Than Happy

“Stop spending?! Where's this magical plan for recovery that doesn't involve spending money? Stopping spending would be DISASTROUS - who's going to make money if no one buys stuff?”

What do you do when you have no money at your house? Run out and buy a bunch of stuff? The only thing obama’s “spending plan” has done so far is bail out bankrupt companies that some of still went out of business WITH OUR MONEY LOST, and put us in deeper debt and higher taxes. Yes STOP SPENDING

Well where I live, several major roads have undergone big refurbishments, new snow plows, police cruisers, stuff like that. Despite the hype, government spending often goes right back into the private sector.

What do you do when you have no money at your house? Run out and buy a bunch of stuff?

No, but I reiterate - things work differently on the macroeconomic scale. If EVERYONE hoarded money, businesses wouldn't make any money, so they couldn't offer jobs, and the entire loop would collapse. Governments never truly run out of money; they must be aware of the reaction of the markets, but when push comes to shove, the faith and credit of the United States is still pretty good.

Come on people. Either you are not listening or you just don't want to hear!

The TARP was created to help struggling businesses, and to decrease the amount of jobs lost (which it has done).

The Stimulus was created to save and ceate 2.5 million jobs over 2 years. According to my calender it's been 9 months!

I can not be the only person that heard those words come out of the presidents mouth!!

Wild,

Sometimes you have to spend money to save money! If my heating and cooling bills in my house are extremely high on a monthly basis I'm going to have to spend $5k-$10k for new energy efficient windows to save that money down the road and make the value of my house go up! Saying don't spend and money makes not sense. Obama also spend money on beefing up the medicare fraud department to save that $60 billion dollars that is defrauded each year in this country! Should he have no spent $200 million to try and save $60 Billion?

has done so far is bail out bankrupt companies that some of still went out of business WITH OUR MONEY LOST, and put us in deeper debt and higher taxes.

See, you are focused on disagreeing with the Presidents decision so you draw no attention to the positive aspect of anything he's done. how about the banks that continued to lend to small businesses because of government money? Do yuo realize that if a bank that is FDIC insured goes under the government is on the hook for the money??? Why not spend the money to keep the bank open, people working, instead of letting the bank fold, having to fire employees, and keeping the small businesses that rely on these banks for lines of credit from having to go out and secure credit from another bank that probably wouldn't be so willing to lend? You, like most don't think big picture! Obama hasn't even made a dent in the debt this country owes! We owed China over $750 billion before Obama was sworn in, and now we owe them just over $800 billion (part of which is interest on the outstanding debt), so please give this "Obama is bankrupting the country" BS a rest!