主题：03/18/2009 Market View -- 宁子

Now we understand the grand plan of the stimulus, bonus hearings, etc.

Ever since we saw the final version of the stimulus package (and of course no one saw it until after it was passed) we pondered and wondered how, how in economic theory or history, would it act to rapidly stimulate the economy? Indeed, how would it do so over a longer period as well?

Then the events subsequent to passage started to unfold. The budget that would have no earmarks had 8,000, but then we find out that earmarks are not really bad, leaving us to wonder why promises were made to cut them out of the budget at all. Senator Schumer even derided those complaining of the $2B or so spent on those earmarks as chatter mongers getting in the way of progress. Strange indeed, but no stranger than the stimulus package.

Next there was the uproar over the $160M in bonuses paid to AIG personnel. Senator Schumer said Congress would tax 100% of the bonus; wow, what happened to equal protection under the law? Barney Frank demanded to have the names and addresses of everyone receiving a bonus. Well hello big brother. So vile was this subversion of the public trust that we had to have congressional hearings to root out the villains and, as one congresswoman said, tax the recipients 1,000% on any bonus received. Wow. For taking a contractual bonus promised to you if you stayed on to help clean up the horrible mess your predecessors created, a contract that the very congressmen railing on television KNEW about, you are treated worse than a drug dealer. Is this the US or the USSR?

$160M is no small amount, but when Congress protests so much over this when they pass trillions in spending without even reading the bills and then chides those complaining of a few billion in waste, you start to see the hypocrisy. You start to see that these hearings are a smoke screen, on our dollar of course, to divert attention to $160M versus the hundreds of billions being squandered and yoked directly to the necks of our children and grandchildren. With a 1.1T deficit, these bonuses are literally nothing.

The anger was swelling, I was reaching for my shoe, and then it hit me. The stimulus plan is not just what is called the stimulus plan. It is the combination of all of the actions taken by the Administration and Congress that are so offensive to our Constitution and form of government, that are so outrageously hypocritical (broken promises, passing hundred billion dollar legislation without reading it, thousands of earmarks when none were supposed to exist, overplayed indignation, affronting the Constitution, launching vendettas from the Capital building) that they evoke a desire to throw objects at our television sets, computers, or anything convenient.

Thus we will require hundreds of millions of new large screen televisions (no wonder they didn't delay implementation of the digital transmissions), computers, computer screens and the like. We will even need to replace what we threw at the object evoking our anger. The ensuing consumption binge will be enormous. How clever. How understanding of our government to bear the brunt of our anger yet do so knowing we are only helping ourselves. Now THAT is truly genius in governing.