Bernanke Proposes A New Stimulus Package

Oct 20th, 2008 @ 3:51 PM by Alden Smith

I wonder when we stop giving away taxpayer money. I also wonder where this bottomless pit of dollars is coming from. Are we simply printing more money, without a silver or gold standard to justify it? I suppose I just dated myself, but it seems to me with the national debt hovering at $10,344,777,848,904.04 right now, and climbing every second, (refresh the page at http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ to see how much it has grown since I posted) then you have to wonder what assets we have to cover this. I found it noteworthy that they have to fix the debt clock because it doesn’t have enough zeros now.

What has prompted this post is a news item I saw tonight on NBC Nightly News. Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman, spoke before the House of Representatives’ Budget Committee this morning, and is endorsing yet another stimulus package. This one, allegedly, is going to be aimed at Main Street. Bernanke has asked the House to consider initiatives to improve access to credit for consumers and homebuyers. The idea is to loosen credit.

Maybe I am missing something here. I thought that was what the $750 billion we just dropped on Wall Street was for. What plans have been made to insure that this gets the economy moving once again? Is it as I said in a previous post – that these Wall Street banks are going to sit on this massive wealth and let themselves get more solvent again before they move? It appears so.

And this is where the move by the Fed is proving to be so badly misjudged. There were no guidelines and parameters in place when this money flowed out of the governmental coffers, and no one to hold accountable. The Fed did not sit down and say to these 9 banks (thus far) that “this is what I want you to do with the money.” Bankers must love this. Their banks are now shored up and they have a neat little cushion provided to them by Joe Six Pack.

The idea of the rescue plan was to get the markets moving again. Until housing prices stabilize, and there is an end to the incessant foreclosures, there will be little relief in the marketplace. With the amount of money flowing out of the government’s vaults, there has to be some kind of action taken. That does not mean sitting on the cash and waiting for a less evil wind to blow. It means getting things underway to allow the country to get on its feet again. Until that time, things will be in turmoil. The next President, whoever that might be, is in for a tough row to hoe. The upcoming election proves to be an interesting one. Regardless of who wins, we have to wonder how much support will be forthcoming in the House and Senate, and what kind of bipartisan support the new President will have. We are nowhere near being out of the woods yet.

Oh. And that clock? It tells me this. The estimated population of the United States is 304,944,820,
so each citizen’s share of this debt is $33,923.32. And counting…

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