Was Obama's $870 billion stimulus plan supposed to create "shovel ready jobs"?
His solution is to spontaneously add billions to the economy for infrastructure projects. These jobs, for the most part will last about a year or less, and cause a drop in unemployment, just in time for elections. After the elections, the jobs will end and we will be further in debt with no real solution. Simply put, he's trying to buy an election with freshly printed currency from the US treasury.
Do the "Too Big to Fail," banks who received trillions of taxpayer dollars in a bailout money required to pay that money back? If not, doesn't that essentially mean that the taxpayers own those banks, or that they have been nationalized?
Companies received $631.9 billion (that was used to save the car companies, the Insurance companies, banks, and so on). The money was in exchange for shares of stock in the company. The government has nearly completely liquidated those shares and ended up making a profit on the deal. They sold the shares for a total of $728.5 Billion (including Dividends, interest, warrants, and other proceeds). Now, not each and every bailout turned a profit. Overall, it was a great deal. It saved the economy, and it made money (not that we should do it again).Bailout Scorecard | Eye on the Bailout | ProPublica
What is the difference between Bush's stimulus and Obama's?
I'm a little lost here. Early last year, Bush sent out $152 billion in stimulus checks. He then followed up at the end of the year with a bait-and-switch bailout package costing $700 billion. I say bait-and-switch because it was advertized to us as the repurchase of toxic debt to free up the financial system, and ended up being investment money and 'bonus' money to Wall St. Now Obama is doing his own stimulus package. $787 billion. I may be wrong here, but the money is going to be spent on tax relief, social security hikes, unemployment hikes, infrastructure, housing, healthcare, education, energy, automobiles, security and law enforcement. Please tell me why. Why are the Republicans having a fit at this effort? To me, the 2nd stimulus is an easy sell. It will create jobs, get the country out of its funk give us a few extra dollars in our pockets. The goal is not to make a few people mega-rich at everyone else's expense, but to improve the country and allow a decent standard of living for more people. It may contain a little bit of 'make work'. It may mean a bigger government that would need to be trimmed down at a later stage. But it is an effort that in my opinion is better spent than $100,000 office makeovers and multi-million dollar bonuses and executive jets for a few. This recession/depression was caused by the greed and stupidity of the financial giants. It was their bad decisions who allowed loans to people who couldn't afford them. They built the house of cards and they deserve to pay the price for their own mess. But I didn't participate in this mess! Now they get bonuses and keep their jobs, while I get small handouts from the government, massive losses in my retirement plan and the risk of unemployment. I really think that these supposedly intelligent Republicans need to get over their compulsion to be contrary. Their solution did not work. They don't have a solution put together that has the far reaching effect that the Obama solution provides. The Republican way is to put trust into financial institutions that have proven themselves to be untrustworthy. Can anyone tell me why the Bush/Republican bailout is superior overall to the Obama/Democrat bailout?
Did President Obama's stimulus program save the economy or waste a lot of money?
Not my area of expertise, but… for the stimulus to work would have needed to be at least double the original $787 B, with none of it going for tax cuts. Larry Summers, who headed up the team analyzing what was needed in 2009, heard from his staff that to bring the economy back would require at least $1.7 T. Summers did not tell Obama this, saying that $700 B would be fine. Obama had to structure almost half of that as tax cuts, which were not stimulative (people who were out of work didn’t need a tax cut, they needed a job and aid to help hold onto their houses).Obama was too much of a centrist to go to the American people and justify the biggest stimulus for recovery since FDR announced the New Deal. Per economists like Richard Pickard, we have a structural depression. Those don’t get solved by halfway measures or traditional anti-recession tools like lowered interest rates or even extended unemployment (which the GOP lead house did away with in 2012).
Obama's "Stimulus Package"?
Does anyone else think that this is a joke? Nothing more than a horrible plan that will cause the generations after us to suffer from a debt even worse than we are experiencing now? What category do millions to resod the Washington Mall fall under? Contraceptives? Acorn? Buying a new fleet for federal employees? Why can’t taxpayers get a these vehicle discounts? This is not a stimulus package, this is a SPENDING package....
Obama's stimulus plan *MUST* fail - how can we help RUSH?
yeah, nice try liberal, pretending to be a republican then talking senselessy to try to make us look like idiots. i want the stock market to go up, everyones losing money and its affecting over half of americans.
Where does the 700Billion Dollar Federal Govt Bailout come from?
Man what the hell is he doing bush dumb @ss shouldnt have been in office in the first place. He is trying to f@ck us before he leave the white house