What do you think?

We give this guy $700 Billion to do with as he pleases. He claims that it is helping the banks extend credit all the while the banks are saying "we have government money now, we can limit the number of loans we give out".

I've read Representative Gohmert's plan to do away with income and FICA taxes for a year, which would inject a good chunk of change into the taxpayer's pocket while not increasing the national debt. Some of the estimates of what the debt will be are around $7 trillion.

I think that is a MUCH better plan than justing handing out money.

As much as I'd love to not pay taxes for a year, where will the government get the money to pay it's bills. It's also the exact same thing as a stimulus check with a different name.

Politics and economics shouldn't be intertwined, paulson should have told the banks "tough shit" in the first place like any other economist would have done.

Fuck, you think a tough market correctional recession would be bad, just wait until we start truly seeing the fallout from all these stupid fucking stopgap procedures. Goddamn politicians and their elections, the only reason they did any of this shit was because they wanted to say they were doing something so they could get elected again.

The difference is government intervention and having the burden fall on the taxpayers or not. If the government takes on the debt it's one thing, but when that debt is directly passed to the citizens (who have no voice in how the companies are run) problems arise.

What we are seeing now is starting to look a lot like the 1970s, the federal government is throwing money into companies that are essentially black holes. We don't know how the money is spent.

Couple the economy with the news that there are people in Connecticut asking for the state's help to subsidize their newspapers: (link, link) and you have some interesting times...

Couldn't the federal gov't just have suspended the taxes the car companies owe for a few years. That essentially would have equaled out the same probably.

If you don't turn a profit, you aren't paying taxes (at least taxes on Revenue).

I'm an idiot. I knew that.

In other news, the Fed cuts rates to 0.5% and doubles its balance sheet, mainly by printing more money: http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/15/news/econo...arket/index.htm

*facepalms*

This post has been edited by Spectatrix: Dec 16 2008, 11:49 AM

economy sucks

It's the perfect plan... Devalue the currency to make it easier to pay off your debts.

Ugh...