STIMULATING THE ECONOMY

STIMULATING THE ECONONY


Nancy Pelosi, to her everlasting credit, has pronounced the four letter word repeatedly which is intimately linked as an indicator of the effectiveness of a stimulus to our economy; jobs, jobs, jobs. Jobs. How is it that her fellow legislators appear to place their call for precipitate action on the basis of what the Dow Jones index tells them?
In the sanctified halls of Congress, especially in an election year, who in their right mind that wants to be re-elected is going to deny the electorate their eight hundred dollar gift from the federal treasury.
Our news media has been reporting, ad infinitum, that consumer spending accounts for seventy percent of GDP. This statement is repeated like a mantra without reference to its original source. Propagandists have, over the years, determined that lies which are repeated frequently enough become accepted as fact by a large segment of the general public.
Putting how we measure GDP aside, whose economy are we stimulating? Retail merchandise when examined shows an increasing trend toward a “made in China”label. Therefore the jobs which are being created, except for sales clerks and shippers, are located in large part in China. Also, the money doled out, a paltry one hundred and fifty BILLION,must be borrowed. So it's China to the rescue with their huge holdings of US Dollars to purchase the Treasury Bonds to fund the stimulus.
So American taxpayers end up creating jobs in China as well as paying interest on the Treasury Bonds held by the Chinese.
Obviously, the burst of the housing bubble is bound to have an effect on employment statistics when considering the many suppliers who support the building industry. The marvel is that American industry has been able to absorb this impact with only a small increment of job losses.
Rather than the simplistic (and wrong) exercise of plunging the nation farther into debt, we need a new crop of legislators who can deal with the infrastructure of our nation and who have not lost touch with Working America.