US Stimulus: "Road to Recovery" = "Road to Hell"

Capital is as big an “input” for our method of farming as diesel fuel or fertilizers made from methane gas. The failure of banking will combine with city and state insolvency to crush public transit, law enforcement, fire protection, and whatever flimsy local safety nets exist to keep the ultra-poor and helpless from die-off. The lowering of living standards by 20 to 50 percent essentially eliminates all but the must critical commerce, meaning that most of the stores in the malls and strip malls lose their customers and shed employees, while the mall and strip mall owners lose their rents, and the bankers lose performing commercial real estate loans. As all this occurs, tax revenues go way down, schools can’t pay their employees or buy diesel fuel for their yellow bus fleets. More people lose the ability to carry health insurance. Hospital emergency rooms are overwhelmed. Health care descends to Third World levels. Meanwhile, pensions are destroyed, the elderly live on dog food and ketchup. . . . - James Kunstler

NVDL: I have not supported the bail out from the start. It was ill-conceived. It was based on an idea that 'something cannot fail". Well it has and it should. Bailing out the automakers was dumb, bailing out the world's bank insurer even dumber. There were far better ways to employ those bonusses...err...I mean funds for bonusses. But then I guess it depends on who you are. if you're rich, it was right, if it was your taxpayer dollars, it was a swindle in broad daylight.

clipped from news.yahoo.com BRUSSELS – The head of the European Union slammed President Barack Obama's plan to spend nearly $2 trillion to push the U.S. economy out of recession as "the road to hell" that EU governments must avoid. It was the strongest pushback yet from a European leader as the 27-nation bloc bristles from U.S. criticism that it is not spending enough to stimulate demand. To encourage banks to lend again, the U.S. government will also pump $1 trillion into the financial system by buying up treasury bonds and mortgage securities in an effort to clear some of the "toxic assets" — devalued and untradeable assets — from banks' balance sheets. Obama insisted Tuesday that his massive budget proposal will put the ailing U.S. economy back on its feet. "This budget is inseparable from this recovery," he said, "because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity."