Okay, if this wasn’t such a big deal, I would laugh. It’s amazing to me how some people’s egos force them to deny reality. We have oil topping $100 per barrel, with no sign of going down, at least significantly (the price of oil has more than tripled in the past 5 years). You have two wars that continue to drain resources from the economy (by some estimates, it’s costing us about $275 million per day). On top of that, you have a housing market where the bottom has fallen out, causing major devastation to many American families.

But, according to George Bush, the economy’s only experiencing a “slowdown”.

So, Bush is out there pushing the whole “economic stimulus package”. You know, the Congress-approved band-aid-on-a-bullet-wound measure to help get the economy on track. We are expected to believe that if some single Americans are given $600 and some married couples are given $1200 (plus, a little extra if you have kids), the economy will be jump-started. This goes to show you just how naive some people are.

The belief that people will go out, spend this money and boost the economy makes a lot of assumptions. First of all, you assume that everyone will be able to treat this as disposable income. You have a lot of people who are behind on their bills and will use this money to catch up on mortgages, utility bills, car payments, etc. I’m sure that it would be welcomed for these families but, this will not help kick start the economy again. Secondly, you have people who have dipped into savings just to keep things afloat so, I suspect that, for a lot of folks, this money will be put into savings. Again, it’s needed but, not going to boost the economy. Finally, you have to realize that, for a economy to flourish, that money needs to circulate among various individuals or businesses in a population. Think about it this way — say you go out an buy a TV with your rebate. Who gets paid? Maybe the corporation that runs the store and a few employees. But, with so little manufacturing going on in the U.S., the money goes offshore to pay suppliers in foreign countries, leaving American workers out of the picture. This means that you end up with fewer middle-class folks who buy the houses, cars, etc. that keep the economy afloat.

I am saying two things:

1) We are dealing with more than a slowdown and
2) We need better ideas than this to get us out of this mess.

Right now, George Bush is much like the kid who cleans up a mess by stuffing everything into a closet, hoping that no one opens it, at least until he’s in the clear. Therefore, I think it’s time to be serious and say that, as a country, we should chalk up the last seven years and the year to come as a loss and gird ourselves to be ready to see just how big this mess is, once the truth is allowed to come out. I have a feeling that, once the next administration starts turning over the rocks, we’ll see just how much truth was hidden from us.

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