New Deal 2.0 Is Getting More Expensive
The Chosen One’s plan to “rescue” the American economy with an unprecedented expansion of the federal government keeps getting more, well … expansive. And more expensive.
President-elect Barack Obama’s advisors are now floating an $850 billion bailout plan that would include aid to belly-up states like California and a massive new infrastructure program.
From Reuters:
Obama’s transition team believes the amount, about 6 percent of the U.S.’s $14 trillion economy, is needed to reverse rising unemployment, said the adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The sum would exceed initial estimates by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as well as surpassing what some economists and the International Monetary Fund say is required.
Well, duh. And of course it’s only going to get bigger.
We just dropped $700 billion – the largest government intervention in the history of our economy – and it didn’t work.
On top of that, we’ve cut interest rates to zero and pumped another trillion or so into other bailouts and related federal guarantees of worthless assets created by the government-induced sub-prime lending collapse.
Seriously, at what point are we going to wake up and realize that more government isn’t the answer here?
Particularly not with national debt soaring to untold heights and another government-spawned fiscal disaster (Social Security) looming on the horizon.
Comments
By FWFIV on December 18th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
We need to take an honest look at what got us into this mess, namely the fact that sub prime loans to poor borrowers ARE NOT the main or underlying reasons for the loss of trillions of dollars. A corrupt and venal financial system enriched itself with paper profits many times over based on multiple false premises. All of the super capitalists on Wall Street all of a sudden believe in the government support of their industry now.
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