World-News

Mark Weisbrot, The Center for Economic and Policy Research: "Nobody needs to be told that our economy is going down the tubes at a rate unseen for decades. Every week brings new numbers that are setting records. In just the three months ending in November the job loss was 1.26 million, the worst since 1975. We have lost more than 2 million jobs in 2008."

http://www.truthout.org/010609S



Stimulus Plan: The Need and the Size

Robert Reich: "The core problem we face is not access to capital. The Treasury has already flooded Wall Street and the banking system with money, committing nearly $350 billion; the Federal Reserve Board has exchanged Treasury bills for some $2.2 trillion of troubled assets; other agencies, such as the FDIC, have guaranteed trillions more. But there has been no appreciable result. Banks will not lend because they fear borrowers will not repay; businesses will not borrow because they do not have adequate markets for their goods and services; individuals cannot and will not borrow because they do not have enough reliable income to do so."

http://www.truthout.org/010709D



Banks on a Wire

Le Monde's editorialist: "Gordon Brown is not happy. His rescue plan for British banks, which everyone - including foreigners - admired when he presented it in October 2008, is not producing the hoped-for results. In the absence of credit, shops are closing and real estate is collapsing ..."

http://www.truthout.org/010709F

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Obama’s terrible stimulus

The Liberty Papers
by Kevin

01/06/09

Obama’s plan is terrible for many reasons. The first obvious reason is that the country really cannot afford any new spending after blowing at least $8.4 trillion (in an overall economy of $13.8 trillion and shrinking) in bailouts for Bush and Paulson’s friends in the financial sector. The second reason is that very little of this new spending is actually permitted in the U.S. Constitution. The Federal government cannot ‘invest’ in ‘green collar jobs’ or any other type of jobs for that matter. The Federal government has no Constitutional role in education spending (which is another part of Obama’s ‘plan’). Thirdly, the areas where you can argue a legitimate duty of the Federal government, highway construction, is prone to abuse and wasteful spending through the earmarking process (which is the currency for corruption)...

http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2009/01/06/obamas-terrible-stimulus/



More on the bogus Obama “jobs” program

Classically Liberal
by CLS

01/06/09

A construction worker hired to build some bike path, merely to create employment, at least builds a bike path. Sure his pay comes from taxing productive jobs and thus reducing their numbers. But as bad as that is the construction worker isn’t inflicting additional harm on the economy when he works. Government employees are largely destructive. They are paid for from the productive sector. But that is not the harm they inflict. More bureaucrats, doing what bureaucrats do, is destructive. They regulate, control and manipulate in ways that benefits themselves or their political masters. I have little doubt that Obama wants an additional 600,000 government workers since the trade union for bureaucrats tends to fund Democratic candidates. An addition 600,000 federal leeches will provide votes for the Democrats and a ready-made lobby group to push for more federal bureaucrats. Unlike the make-work jobs Obama will create these employees will be entirely unproductive and have negative value...

http://tinyurl.com/7hah8l



Politics and corruption, together again

Cato Institute
by David Boaz

01/06/09

Stories of ambitious men being corrupted by the political game have been plentiful since my youth. It amazes me, here amid many calls for the government to take an ever more active role in our country’s doings, that so many of these cautionary tales seem to be forgotten. … FBI investigations and anti-bribery laws will never take the corruption out of politics. The best way to limit it is to keep government small, with few jobs to fill and limited money to spend...

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9876



For real stimulus

National Center for Policy Analysis
by staff

01/06/09

Congress is ready to ram through a half-baked stimulus package costing as much as $1 trillion. But if it’s stimulus we need, why not make it effective stimulus — tax cuts, say, instead of wasteful spending? The massive new spending program that is being pushed by congressional Democrats emboldened by their newly enhanced majorities may come up as soon as Tuesday, when they return from their holiday breaks.”

http://tinyurl.com/7ybg85


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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