http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/09/a-feeling-im-be.html

Come on hot air…commit to something!

BTW…you’re all still donating to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s defense fund like you promised, right?

“I agree that having the three CEOs of the American automakers fly to DC to plead poverty is laughably bad optics.”

Wait what huh? It this just an exceedingly strange typo, or am I missing something?

It’s a little more than a month since the One ascended to the throne, but I am really hoping the next 4 years go quick!

How about including retirement and health care programs? No reason congresscritters shouldn’t enjoy the benefits of their own legislation. a capella on February 25, 2009 at 10:48 AM

Great question and answer, a capella. Maybe the roadmap to recovering the House (where all seats are up) and the Senate (just 1/3) in 2010 should bring this issue to the forefront.

If the dog was a monkey, the Dilbert cartoons would be banned in the new Obama “everything is we define what’s racist” world.

albill on February 25, 2009 at 11:22 AM

just a little tweak for you, but otherwise spot on

Option 1: Fly ORD-DCA on United for $500. Spend 4 hours in the air. Spend 1.5 hours in ORD and 1.5 hours in DCA going through security. Total cost $500 plus 7 X $10,500 = $74,000

Option 2: Fly ORD-DCA on private jet. Spend $24K for jet and 4 hours in the air. Total = $24K + 4 X $10,500 = $66,000

The total cost is $8K less to fly on the corporate jet.

Of course nobody in Congress can figure this out. Not surprising though since they also think spending $1T a year more than you bring in through taxes is a prescription for economic growth.

We know that many of these banks did not want this money, but had it forced on them. At his point I can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t an ulterior motive involved, whereby it would be easier to control them, tell them who to lend to, et cetera. One step short of nationalization, but still under the thumb of the Banking Queen.

Since one million bucks is about 5% of what Democrat Congressmen steal per year (on average), I think that’s a pretty good deal.

$.02

As long as Nancy Pelosi has ‘Witch One” at a cost of $75K a weekend, the Congress is in no position to criticize…

JIMV on February 25, 2009 at 12:58 PM

That’s “Broomstick One”, and the real cost is the fleet of flying monkeys that accompanies her home.

And I refuse to apologize to Al Charlatan for that one!

Much though President Obama may not wish to admit it, his stimulus plans are not original. In 2001-02, a combination of a tax cut of 2% of GDP and spending increases of another 4% of GDP (partly the War on Terror, partly the No Child Left Behind Act and partly cyclical) provided fiscal stimulus of about 6% of GDP between the fiscal years (ending in September) 2001 and 2002. Monetary policy was also exceptionally stimulative, with short-term interest rates declining from 6% to 1% within a two-year period while inflation remained positive.

Judging by results, the George W. Bush stimulus worked rather better than the New Deal. It was begun from a position of fiscal surplus, lessening the strain placed on the debt markets by its borrowing, while inflation during the period was suppressed by the deflationary effects of globalization and the Internet. However, it distorted the economy, leading to an undue concentration in the unproductive sectors of housing and speculative finance, while manufacturing and much of the high-skill service sector was outsourced to Asia. Notoriously, the subsequent expansion led to very meager gains in living standards, except for the very rich, while inflation crept up and the federal budget deficit remained in substantial deficit, even at the top of the 2002-07 expansion.

This time around, the conditions for stimulus were much less propitious than in either the Great Depression or 2001-02. Public spending, including state and local spending, was far higher as a percentage of GDP than in the 1930s. In Europe, particularly Scandinavia and in Japan since 1990, we have seen the adverse effect on growth exerted by high public spending. The increase in global public spending through stimulus plans is thus likely to be substantially growth-destroying in its own right.

Second, an exceptionally large stimulus (including bank and mortgage bailouts) has been combined with a public sector deficit that was already excessive to produce a likely federal budget deficit in fiscal 2009 and 2010 of more than 10% of GDP in each year. The difficulties of financing these deficits will unquestionably be very serious, and the adverse effect on the U.S. Treasury’s ability to borrow resulting from their probable persistence will be equally severe. Outside the United States, Britain and Japan are notable among other countries that were already in a difficult fiscal position before the downturn hit, and will be in impossible positions as a result of their misguided stimuli.

Third, the Obama stimulus package, having been largely dictated by Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) consists largely of short-term state budget palliatives or handouts to favored constituencies, with very little TVA-type long-term beneficial spending.

Even in areas where true economic benefits might be expected, such as the $8 billion subsidy to high speed rail, the package has not been designed to favor rail projects in the country’s main centers of population and economic activity, which could hugely benefit from their rail systems being brought up to current international norms. Instead, it favors the utterly frivolous project to run a maglev train, the most expensive and least tested technology available, to the isolated casino result of Las Vegas. Politically, that project may be very attractive to Reid, but it is economically almost worthless because of Las Vegas’ geographic isolation. It would also be socially highly damaging, forcing the destructive forces of gambling even more deeply into the fabric of American society.

Finally, at the time stimulus began with the bank bailouts last October, there was very little slack in the U.S. economy, with unemployment only around 6%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average at bubble levels over 10,000, house prices still sharply overvalued and the U.S. savings rate still disgracefully moored at around zero. To re-stabilize the economy after its years of imbalance, the savings rate needed to be brought back to its historical level of around 8%, or rather more to make up for the years of nil saving, while the U.S. balance of payments deficit also needed to decline by 5% to 6% of GDP. In such circumstances, injecting yet more wasteful spending into the economy was a wholly perverse approach to the problem.

Going forward, we are now presented with an annual fiscal deficit of 10% of GDP that will be very difficult to finance or to eradicate (and that’s without taking account of further costs of any more bank bailouts that the erratic U.S. Treasury or the Federal Reserve may consider necessary.) President Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Summit will find significant cuts in public spending impossible, given the political orientation of the decision-makers and the expectations of their followers. The only approach that will appear feasible is thus one of massive tax increases, delayed sufficiently as to allow recovery from the recession before they take effect.

It’s a shame that our Corporate Execs are just as cowardly as our elected officials.

According to the latest announcement from Turbo Tim Geithner’s Treasury, TPTB has decided to make this particular credit non-recoverable from the taxpayer.

Here is the link

Clearly the government is desperate to get sheeple to sign off on death pledges for particle-board-and-stucco McMansions.

I’m still waiting for details on the Bank Bailout Plan Du Jour