50 Comments

1. fred:

In mid to late 2006, when the Fed had been raising interest rates, the folks in places like California who had bought very expensive homes on sub prime, variable rate mortgages got clobbered. Of course, there was a bubble in housing and prices were getting to levels that were just not sustainable. The last flippers holding the bag lost. Then, the Fed reversed course and the dollar started to slide in value, feeding into the currency trading ties into the commodities’ markets, like oil. So, many of the people on the edge to begin with because of their mortgage payments, got killed when they could no longer afford to drive. Discretionary income was going right out the window and flowing to places like Moscow and Caracas.

It got worse in 2008. And the dominoes were falling.

A lot of the sell off in equities after the election is investors bailing out before the Obama tax hikes, or the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010. Investors are looking at how the carbon tax will affect consumers and producers and they don’t like what they see.

How is Oobonga and Congress going to pay for it all (the stimulus package)? And if they raise taxes AND decide to anchor economic policy to the junk science of AGW, the news for the country will continue to be negative.

This is going to be Jimmy Carter, Part II. Four years and out for these amateurs.

Dec 20, 2008 - 5:31 pm 2. Bob:

Zimbabwe recently came out with a new $500 million dollar note, worth 8 bucks current US, or, about eight loaves of bread, if you can find any bread there.

Dec 20, 2008 - 6:14 pm 3. Frau Jedöns:

Weimar Republic? Here we come!

Dec 20, 2008 - 6:40 pm 4. Lifeofthemind:

@Bob,
Value in a week will be what, a half buck? When will it’s currency value be less than the cost of printing it? Bet more of them are produced for sale in NYC as novelty items than ever make it to Zimbabwe.

Dec 20, 2008 - 7:01 pm 5. Fat Man:

Greg Mankiw.

The truly amusing thing is that there is no chance that any program approved in 2009 will result in economic activity before 2011. Given that all major infrastructure projects are subject to environmental review and legal challenges, 2013 is more likely.

Furthermore, back in the 1930s, big public works projects required the hiring of thousands of men with strong backs and no other qualifications. Not so much anymore.

Dec 20, 2008 - 7:04 pm 6. Zim:

You can’t spend your way to economic stability, but spending (our taxes, our future) is all the government knows how to do. To make matters worse, people who would usually put a stop to this insanity aren’t because no one trusts what they see, hear, read anymore.

Where in an ambiguous time right now, but it won’t stay that way. Reality is about to smack us right between the eyes.

Dec 20, 2008 - 7:48 pm 7. Alexis:

Remember when I expressed my suspicion that sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East got caught by the Wall Street collapse, with the effect that oil prices went through the floor to recoup losses on Wall Street? Apparently, the list of victims from Madoff’s Ponzi scheme includes the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=18836588

Oil producing countries would have needed as much cash as possible as quickly as possible to keep from losing face from losing money on Wall Street, and particularly losing money on Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Quick cash would have been necessary to cover up the shame of losing so much money.

Dec 20, 2008 - 7:50 pm 8. wretchard:

According to the IHT article, Madoff began by tapping his country club friends, then he expanded to ever wider circles in an effort to keep the ball rolling. That’s the nature of a Ponzi, once the music stops and everyone tries to sit down, they discover they are a number of chairs short. So off it went through Europe and then further and further afield:

Madoff’s agents next cut a cash-gathering swath through the Gulf, then Southeast Asia. Finally, they were hurtling with undignified speed toward China, with invitations to invest that were more desperate, less exclusive. One Beijing business executive who was approached said it seemed the Madoff funds were being pitched “to anyone who would listen.”

Eventually, the article says, Madoff’s salesmen came to the doors of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Eventually the world wasn’t big enough. They ran out of marks to squeeze. The day of reckoning came. But consider for a moment, the situation from Madoff’s point of view at that fateful moment. He was broke. Well then, his country club friends would probably sue him, maybe they would stop sending him birthday greeting cards; but what do you suppose his clients in Russia, China and the Gulf would say when he told them he couldn’t pay them back their money? “Hello Mr. Wang Yu, this is Bernie. Ha, ha, I’m fine. Say Mr. Wang, that half-billion dollars you invested? Yes. It’s gone. That’s right, gone. No, this is not a joke. Mr. Wang? Hello, Mr. Wang?”

At that moment the prospect of life in Federal prison may have been exceedingly attractive. Perspective changes things. As R. Lee Ermey once said, “the dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.”

Dec 20, 2008 - 8:13 pm 9. hdgreene:

When you only know how to use a hammer than every problem starts looking like a nail. If you only know how to inflate speculative bubbles, then every slow down looks like it needs low interest rates, more stimulus, more business government partnerships and more money in circulation.

President elect Obama should announce that he will extend the Bush Tax cuts; work to keep energy prices low by encouraging domestic production; freeze overall government spending and introduce a program to bring total government spending at all levels to below 1/3 of GNP. In the name of national unity, he should say his health care reform plan will embrace the market friendly McCain proposals to improve service and control cost. The move to a green economy can be put on a fifty year time line to allow new technologies to mature and prove themselves — cap and trade will be put in the deep freeze. If Obama will make these commitments, then his supporters will stop complaining about Rick Warren giving that invocation.

Dec 20, 2008 - 8:20 pm 10. njcommuter:

When will they learn: the future matters. People will behave differently when they know that the tax relief will extend over time; they will plan to use it over time, and that planning will lead to growth. One-time stimulus shots don’t do it.

Dec 20, 2008 - 8:47 pm 11. fred:

Spot on, njcommuter. These people are babes in the woods. Amateurs who will not pay attention to history, but if they do it is to some mythical FDR miracle.

This election is exposing just how inadequately educated our 18-30 year olds are. And how gullible and stupid our single females are.

Now the real test is to see if they will learn from experience. I’m sure some will, and it’s a matter of how many will so that in 2012 we can shift gears and get the country going again.

Dec 20, 2008 - 9:30 pm 12. Charles:

I argue here that a good way to get desalination plants off the ground is to merge them with solar and wind mill projects. The best places for solar in the US are roughly in the southwest. The best places for wind power is in the midwest. Underlying both areas are huge saltwater aquifers. The salt concentration is low–but it is sufficiently high to make the water unpotable without desalination plants.

The hoover dam was the signature project for the FDR period. It produces profitably for the US government water and power.

Something similiar could be done with desalination plants merged with solar/wind plants.

The work could be permitted quickly if it were done on Federal Lands (BLM). The incoming secretary of energy has already come out in favor of federal provisioning such installations with powerlines to connect them to the electric grid.

Dec 20, 2008 - 10:00 pm 13. whiskey:

Obama’s experience is with distributing funds from the Federal Government to various “community groups” which then vote for him.

It’s clear Obama wants to do this with the US. It’s also clear that Reid and Pelosi want a porkapalooza, with all that money going to THEIR dialed in backers.

At no time will the money actually go to keeping people at work, or propping up wages, or real income, or job growth, or anything like that. Which ever group of thieves “wins” the result will be net impoverishment. No more Ipods. Consumer goods. Or friends and family in the consumer materialist world.

Expect the Greek riots times three.

Dec 20, 2008 - 10:55 pm 14. Nomenklatura:

A key aspect most people seem to miss is that to the extent ’stimulus’ spending is on one-time projects it may be marginally helpful. It doesn’t even matter much if spending of this sort is totally wasted (as it often will be).

To the extent though that ’stimulus’ spending is used to fund new ongoing programs (requiring to be paid for with a perpetual stream of additional tax revenues) it will have a severely depressing effect on new investment in the US. This impact is the opposite of ’stimulus’ with, right now, a high risk of disastrous results.

Dec 20, 2008 - 11:32 pm 15. richard short:

Let’s face it; we have the Un-educated trying to work with the un-willing on how to accomplish the unknown. You Guy’s and Gal’s up on the hill are a little too big for your Britches or your Skirts and your shoes don’t fit right. Self imposed agony with no way out.

Dec 21, 2008 - 9:18 am 16. richard short:

I thought pyramid schemes were illegal. Seems as though they have somehow become the norm. Rob from the rich and give to the poor…..Rob from the poor and give to the rich; round and round we go on this train with no destination and no conductor at the controls.. What was the old saying?? Like re-arranging deck chairs on a sinking ship?

Dec 21, 2008 - 9:25 am 17. X3NA:

W: At that moment the prospect of life in Federal prison may have been exceedingly attractive. Perspective changes things. As R. Lee Ermey once said, “the dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.”

They must have been desperate indeed, for Tribesmen to go to Arab oil sheiks for cash. But I heard on the news that Mad Dog Maddoff is out on bail, with his wife’s two mansions forfeit if he flees the country. So he doesn’t seem to be too worried about hit men finding him. And about the line from Full Metal Jacket, that wasn’t R. Lee Ermey, that was Joker standing over a mass grave where the bodies were covered in lime.

Dec 21, 2008 - 10:02 am 18. Whitehall:

Democrats ALWAYS fall back on the “broken window fallacy.”

If someone broke every window in town, employment would increase as lots of people would be employed making and installing replacement glass.

Would the town be wealthier because of the breaking of the windows?

Obviously not since resources would have been consumed for no productive uses.

Same with the “stimulus” plan. True, government can, on occasion, do something that improves productivity. Hoover Dam did produce electricity and make possible agricultural development in the Imperial Valley. Potable water supplies to Las Vegas and other riverside towns was improved.

However, most such projects are productivity sinks, not sources. Look at California genetic engineering initiative of a few years ago – money down the tubes.

Dec 21, 2008 - 11:39 am 19. Daniel:

I would say that the only way to save everyone from this economy mess is not to save the big companies, instead give every tax payer a stimulus package of $50,000.00. I for sure be willing to purchase a new car and pay all the bills off. Let the money trickle upwards.

Dec 21, 2008 - 12:29 pm 20. Peter Boston:

When do we stop kidding ourselves with the term Free Market Economy?

Maybe they’ll start paying guvmnt bonuses for changing your voter registration to D.

Dec 21, 2008 - 2:08 pm 21. Mongoose:

Just give a 2 year suspension of corporate income tax (and cut spending to keep in line with the short term tax shortfall). That would do the trick. Better yet, do away with corporate income tax altogether and then watch 2/3rds of the international corp. 2000 relocate to the US of A — it would be boom-times like the 1950’s.

Let GM, the UAW and the like go pound rocks. Make Wall St. give back the bailout in 18 months time. Oh, and put some of those crooks in jail.

It goes without saying that government cannot create real jobs, but what is being missed here is that these sort of “infrastructure” projects do not create the kind of middle class jobs that will be missed in this recession. It is not manual laborers that they should be concerned with — unless they want to drive us all to that level (hmm….).
the middle aged boomer with house payments and two kids in college will not be helped much by “infrastructure projects”.

On top of that, once the money is gone these newly “created” jobs will just go away and no meaningful new skills at all will have been added to the work force. Truly a “bridge to nowhere”.

They sure want to keep pumping into this sector, one way or another, or so it seems.
Must be a lot of Dem “stakeholders” in “infrastructure” (whatever that word means, I am still confused about what they mean), and I bet it is not just the unions that are the chief “stakeholders”.

The left is always grousing about a “declining infrastructure”. I wish that they would put forward evidence of this, and maybe explain what they mean by “infrastructure”. I can never figure out what they are complaining about. What this really amounts to is squandering almost 10% of the GDP on truely bad “investments”. That money should be in private hands and funneled into proper investments for the future – for the next technology wave. Imagine what would have ahppened if in 1980 the government had stolen a trillion out of the hands of the investors just before the personal computer revolution was about to hit. This “stimulus” will just be used to reward Dem special interests and create even more lefty NGOs, a stimulus we would all be better off to forgo altogether. It would be more productive to just take the money out and burn it. At least that might help inflationary pressure (but not by much at the rate we are going). Japan tried this “infrastructure” racket back in the 1990’s and it did not work. Any idiot can see this, so one must gather that something altogether different than a “national recovery” is being planned for.

At all points the Democrats are acting as if they were in this weird time warp; they seem to think it is 1931. It is extremely bizarre. Do they really not deep down inside understand what has happened the last 40 years or so? It appears not. Do they <really believe their own BS? If so then does that meanthe problem with them all these years be one of just stupidity? Wow.

The democrats will be a complete disaster for us; it will tale a generation to recover from their nincompoopery and perdifery, if recover we can at all. I bet the dollar will no longer be the major reserve currency on the other side of 4 years. The ECB is sure acting like this. Are the democrats truly executing a program of willful destruction of our entire heritage? If not, they could not do better if they tried.

Make one wonder who their rel paymasters are.

If the GOP does not get its act together and take back the Hill, we may date the real decline of the US into a thrd rate nation from the date of Obama’s inauguration.

Dec 21, 2008 - 2:45 pm 22. Mongoose:

rel paymasters = real paymasters

Dec 21, 2008 - 2:48 pm 23. X3NA:

Fred: This is going to be Jimmy Carter, Part II. Four years and out for these amateurs.

Yeah, Bush sure did a professional job on the deficit and the economy and the war and Katrina. Let’s do that again.

Mongoose: The left is always grousing about a “declining infrastructure”. I wish that they would put forward evidence of this

You mean, again? Another freeway bridge in Minneapolis? How many more people have to die?

Dec 21, 2008 - 6:05 pm 24. twobyfour:

@ 23. X3NA

Sooo, lemme get it straight… That GWB made some mistakes justifies making far worse mistakes during the next administration.

I see.

But… why is that again?

Dec 21, 2008 - 6:22 pm 25. Peter Boston:

Arguments about Democrats and Republicans is plain silly. Although there may still be a few Republican Senators and Members who hold some belief in America as a commercial republic, the rest of those aristocrats occupying Washington sinecures are doing as much as possible as fast as possible to make this country a poor replica of the late Ottoman Empire.

A pox on all of them.

Dec 21, 2008 - 6:29 pm 26. BDelsol:

I love this talk about investing in infrastructure as a solution — as if the whole problem with our economy is we have bad roads and wobbly bridges. And just how will adding jobs in road construction provide jobs? Most of the unemployed are coming from the service sector. What — are we going to retrain financial service workers to pour concrete? Dogma has calcified the brains of the entire Democratic leadership. They need to free up their thinking or ever penny of that trillion dollar “investment” will be thrown down a rathole.

Dec 21, 2008 - 8:37 pm 27. geoffb:

“limiting the package only to projects likely to create a large number of jobs quickly for as little money as possible”

I seem to recall that White Sea Canal project employed a huge number for very little cash. Really turned that economy around too it did.

Dec 21, 2008 - 10:27 pm 28. Mongoose:

Xena: Please either go get some deprogramming or take your talking points and go back to KOS. Come back when you achieve adulthood and have something meaningful to contribute to this forum. You are embarrassing yourself here.

Dec 22, 2008 - 1:55 am 29. Starko:

Hopefully this isn’t too off-topic, but just heard a report saying Obama is putting Biden to work to be support the economic health of the middle class, and to be sure they aren’t “left behind”.

Maybe it’s just me, but now I’m waiting for a 5-year plan. There’s just too many excuses for these guys to try and engineer the economy they want, rather than the economy that’s viable over the long-term.

Dec 22, 2008 - 5:36 am 30. maineman:

I still like the point made by Spengler, David Warren, and Pope Benedict long ago: if you lack the ethical and moral substrate for approaching the material world, the free market will take you to hell in a handbasket more efficiently than any other model.

We’re like the alcoholic that has to hit bottom and then join A.A. to turn things around. Hitting bottom looks like it’s going to be far from a soft landing. And liberals don’t seem like very good candidates for a 12-step program that involves recognition of one’s powerlessness to control everything, taking a clear-eyed moral inventory, making restitution for past transgressions and the like.

Dec 22, 2008 - 6:29 am 31. Mongoose:

I saw that too about Biden. At first I thought it was Scrappleface or something….maybe they where just talking about remembering them in their their rhetoric, in their talking points, when they said “left behind”. Biden looking out for the middle class, now that is a good one. Cannot fault their sense of humor, I will say that. There are some real cards over there in UnicornLand.

Really now, the Democrats and the Left despise the middle class. Save them? They have been trying to destroy them for 70 years. As all good socialists and communists know, the Bourgeois, haute and petite, are the enemies of all progress. They have not just minds of their own but means too. Cannot have that, now can we?

Notice though how this term being is repositioned and redefined these days. It used to mean people that owned their own business. Now it is just tome sort of earning threshold. We here that auto workers, for instance, have a “middle class standard of living” that is “eroding”. We often here about government employees referred to as mambers of the “middle class”. When I was young, the status of “middle class” had a whole other set of determinants, and not all of them where purely economic.

The Middle class will be the target of the Obamabats, they will just call them “the rich”.

Really, these people have not a clue as to how to “save” the economy, nor do they really have the desire to do so. Aristocrats one and all, they just run the gamut from phlegmatic to frenzied. That intensity, that alacrity we see is purely an emotional state. It has nothing to do with intelligence, experience, knowledge, wisdom or even a sense of duty.

The halls of government are going to be chock full of “smart young things” typing away at their laptops and churning out reams of policies, spreadsheets, position papers and red tap, and most all of which will be deeply destructive to our fortunes and liberties. It all amounts to a sort of superstition, sort of like consulting the Delphic Oracle. They should just send them home.

Someone here has said “a pox on both their houses”. Well the only hope we have is that the GOP can take back the hill, stonewall them for 2 years and start undoing the mess they will make. There is no way on earth that we wil take back the democrat party. It left the solar system quite some time ago.

And as to the rest of the world, watch our competitors seize upon this moment to mover closer to parity with us.

That is what the democrats are really about: Impoverishing America to the level of the rest of the world. We cannot have America standing out in the new tranzi world order.

They have a very good chance of succeeding at this. They have no chance at all at success in “saving” our economy.

If we do not watch out we will lose our country. What is wrong with the electorate? Do they really think that Uncle Sam can “fix the economy”? The Boomers are getting pretty ripe with age; they should know better than this.

Dec 22, 2008 - 6:53 am 32. Mongoose:

yome – some , here= hear.

Dec 22, 2008 - 7:05 am 33. Unsk:

To solve our financial quagmire, Obama would have to correctly diagnose how we got here ini the first place. But that would implicate himself and his fellow democrats, would’nt?

To augment Whiskey’s point this bailout is nothing more than a big gift to Obama favored constituencies and the intended result is to make these interest groups stronger and more politcally powerful vis a vis the rest of the us.

How much for ACORN? How much for the unions? How much for the environmentalists? How much for the lawyers? How much for the illegals? And how much will end up kicked back into the Democrat coffers? This proposal is largely a political kickback scheme.

What are all these environmental and energy saving measures in government buildings going to accomplish? Back in 1984, California passed a stiff energy code which mandated significantly less energy consumption in building lighting, appliances and heating and air conditioning. As far as most energy saving efficiencies, over 90% of what we could accomplish today, were available then. Most government work since was probably mandated to use the availble energy saving devices available. So now we will be spending hundreds of billions on energy savings to achieve a nearly negligible improvement.

Oh and those big wind farm and solar projects the O is going to do couldn’t go online for years either. The solar projects in the Southwestern desert are under a Interior department moratorium to study environmental effects. The big wind farms need a enormous upgrade of the grid, and lots of studies to get going, much greater capacity in the wind turbines manufacturing sector and OBTW, a healthy financial sector to provide private capital.

In addition, even if those infrastructure jobs did get going, in the big cities, most of the construction jobs would go to illegals. Why are we bailing them out?

I fail to see how the package helps the major problem, the frozen private financial markets at all. It would seem to borrow a term from the seventies, to “crowd out” private financing sources for its grandiose schemes , in essence reducing the financing available to the private sector which needs the money the most. Obama is essentially providing a stimulus to the sectors of the economy like government and government subsidized work, which are not hurting as much, and taking away funding from the portion of the economy that needs it the most, the private sector.

Dec 22, 2008 - 8:21 am 34. trangbang68:

What’s with all the lesbian trolls who show up here wanting to scrap? Is somebody spiking their Cheerios with testosterone?

Dec 22, 2008 - 8:34 am 35. Mongoose:

trang: er..ah..knowledge envy? Well, some kind of envy…

Unsk: Just so.

Dec 22, 2008 - 9:38 am 36. Mario Sanchez:

It took the Ttreasury almost 3 months to $250B dollars, and all they had to do was wire funds from one account to another. They didn’t have to have environmental impact analyses, didn’t have to go through the courts to clear out existing property claims, didn’t have to hire & mobilize groups of workers trained in heavy machinery or specialized clean-energy technology, didn’t have to build or buy or move heavy equipment, didn’t have to actually build anything, didn’t have to wait until human labor was actually exerted before cutting checks.

A $1T public works project will take 12-16 months to spend its first $250B.

Dec 22, 2008 - 9:48 am 37. Peter Boston:

The age of the free market economy is gone. Finis. Kaput. POTUS just sent $17 billion to 2 failing companies after Congress said no. Paulson has what – $700 billion more to spread around with no accountability to anybody for his choices?

Obama is talking about a trillion more?

If anybody in Washington or any State capitol for that matter were genuinely interested in promoting job growth would they not first consider the most prolific engine of job growth in the economy over the last 10, 20, 50 years? And find ways to make that source stayed viable if not more efficient?

You don’t have to an economist to know that small business has created more jobs and more personal wealth over the last several decades than all government programs combined. Is there even a single voice in Washington that champions entrepreneurship? A single voice to say that government must remove the obstacles to small business start ups?

A political economy doesn’t need or want capital markets. What angel investor will put his capital at risk when some bureaucrat can wipe him out by simply writing blank checks to a more politically compliant competitor?

It’s amazing that the world changed so quickly, but it has.

Dec 22, 2008 - 9:58 am 38. Agoraphobic Plumber:

“You mean, again? Another freeway bridge in Minneapolis? How many more people have to die?”

I lived in the Twin Cities for over a dozen years, and I drove over that bridge a hundred times. I also drive over lots of other bridges every day, and use other infrastructure.

You know what? I like my chances of surviving.

You know what else? That bridge, one of the larger ones around, was rebuilt in a year.

You know what else? I see a LOT of guys (and gals) working on roads and bridges around here every year. The running joke is that Minnesota has two seasons, winter and road construction.

We do NOT lack for effort on keeping up the infrastructure. Anybody who tells you different is ignoring their lying eyes.

As far as how many have to die, well, get back to me when we reach a number similar to those that died when Stalin decided to work on “infrastructure”.

Dec 22, 2008 - 10:01 am 39. Mongoose:

Agrora: My sentiments exactly. Clear something up for me: It is true that that bridge went down because of a design flaw?

At any rate, is this bridge not the responsibility of the State and not the Feds?

Dec 22, 2008 - 10:11 am 40. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”"”Zimbabwe recently came out with a new $500 million dollar note, worth 8 bucks current US, or, about eight loaves of bread, if you can find any bread there.”"”"”"”"”

A loaf of bread for a dollar? What a bargain!

Just trying to see the bright side of things . . . .

Dec 22, 2008 - 11:02 am 41. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”"”"Oil producing countries would have needed as much cash as possible as quickly as possible to keep from losing face from losing money on Wall Street, and particularly losing money on Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Quick cash would have been necessary to cover up the shame of losing so much money.”"”"”"”"”"

AHA! Another nefarious Zionist plot!

Dec 22, 2008 - 11:05 am 42. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”"President elect Obama should announce that he will extend the Bush Tax cuts; work to keep energy prices low by encouraging domestic production; freeze overall government spending and introduce a program to bring total government spending at all levels to below 1/3 of GNP. . . . . . he should say his health care reform plan will embrace the market friendly McCain proposals . . . . . The move to a green economy can be put on a fifty year time line to allow new technologies to mature and prove themselves — cap and trade will be put in the deep freeze. If Obama will make these commitments, then his supporters will stop complaining about Rick Warren giving that invocation.”"”"”"”"”"

HA! HA! When pigs fly!

Oh. Wait. He did invite Rick Warren, didn’t he? And he placed a bunch of centrists in his cabinet. Hmmmm . . . . Maybe — if only in the interest of his political aggrandizement — he might actually consider such notions. Or maybe I can flap my arms and fly to the Moon.

Dec 22, 2008 - 11:13 am 43. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”"”15. richard short:

Let’s face it; we have the Un-educated trying to work with the un-willing on how to accomplish the unknown. You Guy’s and Gal’s up on the hill are a little too big for your Britches or your Skirts and your shoes don’t fit right. Self imposed agony with no way out.”"”"”"”"

The proper term for that collection of white-collar criminals on The Hill is: “Feckless Crapweasels.”

I’m sure the expression has made the Oxford dictionary by now.

Dec 22, 2008 - 11:17 am 44. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”"We do NOT lack for effort on keeping up the infrastructure. Anybody who tells you different is ignoring their lying eyes.”"”"”"”

No kidding. I’ve noticed this as well. Whether walking or driving or taking public transport, there is always some kind of infrastructure work in progress and getting in the way.

Dec 22, 2008 - 11:20 am 45. joe buzz:

These no accountability bail outs are working great too as now the banks are implying that they either can not or will not indicate what they are doing with the funds….

Dec 22, 2008 - 11:37 am 46. slade:

The Case of the Missing Bonuses.

Goldman Sachs reported Tuesday that it paid $10.93 billion in compensation for the year, which includes salaries and bonuses, payroll taxes and benefits. That is down 46 percent from a year ago. Goldman Sachs received $10 billion from the Treasury.

Dec 22, 2008 - 12:43 pm 47. X3NA:

This is what Obama is going to do to the US military now that it belongs to him.

Dec 22, 2008 - 5:36 pm 48. qrstuv:

Well, gosh, I’m just looking forward to that tax cut that The One promised.

(If he actually did that instead of spending on “stimulus programs,” i.e., Friends of Democrats, that would help.)

A pox on them, I say too.

Dec 22, 2008 - 6:46 pm 49. cornfuzed:

Watched your youtube piece. Maybe you need a new picture for this blog, you look ten years younger on the vidio

Dec 23, 2008 - 5:24 am 50. Steynianism 300 « Free Canuckistan!:

[...] JUST CAN’T GET ENOUGH: The President Elect has “expanded his goals for a massive federal stimulus package”, according [...]

Dec 23, 2008 - 1:59 pm

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