Prove that there would have been a depression without the stimulus. Here's the latest evidence the stimulus is not working. Disappointing jobs report sends stocks tumbling - Yahoo! News
You made an objective statement "trillion dollar taxpayer bailouts and spending packages do not prevent depressions." You can either back it up or you can't.
if i said magic fairies dont prevent depressions, would i have to back that up as well? what if we sent out the fairies in 2009, would we now claim they kept us from a 1930's depression? i dont believe taxpayer bailouts and massive spending prevents depression? do you think they do? why? because barack says so and you believe barack is sufficiently "moderate" so you will agree in order to keep alive your charade? taxes are a limiter of progress, not a creator. they dont come from a magical fantasyland. a job created with tax dollars is a job lost in the private sector. the guy hwo paid those taxes for that government job was going to use those same dollars for a private purpose, which also would have created jobs. except instead of some useless crap, he would have used his money for something he actually wanted and deserved. you dont grow the economy with government, thats just economic reality. but to answer your question directly: no i dont think magic fairies rescue the economy, and no i cannot back that statement up. maybe i am wrong. maybe fairies do fix everything. **** principles, lets just try random **** and believe it works.
Stimulus is a temporary fix that delays the addressing of systematic problems (ie some attempt at fiscal responsibility). Will we get some nice things out of stimulus? Most definitely. New/better roads, subways, saved manufacturing jobs and lots of general improvements to public property. What is troubling about massive stimulus and bailouts are the things that won't be so apparent to the naked eye. Government is steering money to the most politically-connected industries. That's called playing favorites. Our state and federal debt levels are completely unsustainable. We keep pouring money into Fannie and Freddie without asking, "Why does our government STILL guarantee mortgage loans to people with so-so credit who only put 3.5% down? Why is the government involved in the housing market at all?" Nothing has been solved. (I should take the time to note that the wars we're fighting and the 1,000s of troops we have all over the globe are more expensive, wasteful, ineffective and dumb than 1,000 TARPs). If a publicly traded company with horrible earnings raised its dividend, sure the stock price would improve -- but the fundamentals wouldn't cease to suck. Actually, they'd suck more because they would be financing a dividend raise with debt. If there is any doubt that stimulus only works for a short time, expensively delaying the truth, please look at this chart:
Bailing out the banks staved off a depression. The stimulus lessened the effects of the recession which was totally unnecessary.
martin made the assertion, not me. If you can prove it then do so. That's only evidence that unemployment is still high. The economy is much broader than just the employment figures.
you made the assertion, dude, you said the stimulus worked because we had no depression. "Is there a depression happening? No? Then it is a success. " - red
We had an economic recovery last year or did you miss it? A depression is a decline in GDP among other things. We did not have a rash of bank failures, GDP is positive, and the dollar is stronger. Cause and effect.
