When $1.4 Trillion Just Doesn't Get the Job Done, It's Time for Stimulation
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants you to know that there is no lock on the U.S. Treasury:
With the jobless rate rising and the economy continuing to slow, Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters: "We have to keep the door open to see how this goes."
Pelosi's remarks came after senior House Democrats met behind closed doors with four prominent economists, who praised the actions taken by Washington to ease the effects of a recession that threatens to be the most severe since the 1930s. The $787 billion stimulus package, a $700 billion bailout for the U.S. financial system and President Obama's proposal to stem the tide of residential foreclosures are all sound policies that should begin to make a difference in the coming months, they told lawmakers.
The largest threat to trees is now officially the government, which will likely need to clear cut the planet just to print enough money to put us all back to work, back in homes, and back in brand-new Chrylser LeBaron coupes.
This sort of endless war-gaming, pump-priming, and jawboning, even before earlier rounds of intervention have fully come online much less been proven disastrously ineffective, is precisely the sort of "bold, persistent experimentation" that helped extend and exacerbate the Great Depression. For more on that, go here or watch below:
An alternative script is to acknowledge problems and say that we need to stop running around constantly, fretting over every burp, hiccup, and fart in the Dow, the unemployment rate, you name it. An actually better script would have been to show fiscal restraint now on the spending side, return the payroll tax or other large sums of money directly to the people, and then figure out which welfare programs to fund to ameliorate short-term dislocations due to recession.