Osler's Razor

This is great. This topic has been up for nearly four hours and not one idea. I guess this means you all agree with me that we shouldn't spend $1 billion in a fruitless attempt to stimulate the economy, right?

Oh, and if I had to vote I would vote that we spend it on beer and grilled cheese sandwiches. What is better than a cold beer and a good grilled cheese sandwich?
 

have the treasury print money, put the money in bottles, put the bottles in an abandoned coal mine, fill the mine with refuse from the landfill, and then leave it to private enterprise and the well-tried principles of laissez faire to dig them out. There need be no more unemployment and the real income of the community would be increased.

-John Maynard Keynes
 

A project to find the best burger in Waco.. Pay me my usual billable rate plus expenses and I will fly to Dallas, rent a car (I've learned my lesson about flying to Waco), drive to Waco and spend a week or two sampling burgers. Then drive back to Dallas, fly home and hire a personal trainer to lose the weight I gained whilst on my mission.

Who benefits? Me and my creditors first of all, but also the Washington Airports Authority, as I must pay for parking at one of the DC area airports, the airlines, the vendors at the airports, the rental car company, people selling gasoline in Texas, the proprietors of the burger joints in Waco, not to mention Katy's, Crickets, Common Grounds, Georges or any other place I drink or eat while in town, plus the personal trainer.

Better yet, just give me a stack of cash and let me spend it. Why waste it by processing it through a bunch of government programs?
 

My pitch, with a little help from the Statue of Liberty:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, (and help me lift them up and employ them).

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. (And watch me make it great, here on this soil.)

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, (and help me to make them prosper).

I lift my lamp beside the golden door! (And the light bears no party affiliation.)

Now, please. Thank you."
 

I vote for the IPLG plan.

The stimulus is yesterday's news now. A fait accompli.

Now we're back to the banks.

I move that the Razor scrap the plan to do stimulus on Thursday and go for the more topical TARP makeover.

My sense is that the stimulus doesn't matter nearly as much as the TARP. We have all lived through recessions; recessions come and go. Some are more painful than others.

None of us have lived through a bank panic. If the administration can keep the financial system from collapsing, we can all look forward to many more downturns and recoveries in our lifetimes. If the credit markets come back, then surely one trillion smackers in any incarnation will lead to some sort of uptick in the economy. On the other hand, if the banks tank, we eventually wake up in a totally different world.
 

Step 1. I will take $1 billion dollars and buy all the pandas I can find.

Step 2. I will use the pandas as collateral for a loan to purchase a flame thrower.

Step 3. I will use the flamethrowers to [censored] the pandas resulting in [censored].

Step 4. Apply for a panda/flamethrower bail out.

Just trust me and give me the money.
 

Well, if it's government money you have, and jobs you need to make, and you're the government, the solution is to create government jobs involved in infrastructure and regulation of the economy to rein it in and start fixing things. Sure, that sounds an awful lot like nationalization of certain parts of our economy, increased "big government" oversight of the private sector, and the creation of jobs almost exclusively working for Big Brother, but what else are you going to do? Give it to the yay-hoos that caused this mess in the first place and hope they don't screw up the second or third time around?
 

Give it to some of us post-PC guys and let us spend it all in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. This will accomplish several goals
1. finish the rebuilding of the gulf coast
2. create jobs- waiters and servers/entertainers
3. Put more cash into the economy- big tips, anyone
4. help the "common man"- service persons need a bailout, too.
5. help maintain struggling enterprises that are "too big to fail"- Gallatoires (sp?); Brennan's; Commander's Palace, etc

Now, I have no personal stake in this use of the bailout $, as I will be here in Texas taking the bar, however, my compatriot, a "Mr. T" is assuredly at least as deserving of this $ as the auto execs are (at least he has not driven a multi-billion dollar business into ruin).

In the alternative, just declare a year of jubilee, as in the old testiment. Cancel all the debts on now worthless assets, set the captives free, etc. This will not cost a dime, though it may violate the contracts clause of the US Constitution- any advice on this, Professor Osler?

- Just my thoughts,
Chicago
 

I like Anon 4:35's suggestion.

In case that doesn't work, I suggest investing heavily in Fisher-Price so that they HAVE to start making Puffalumps again.

Puffalumps make people happy. It's a fact.

Depression = sad. Puffalumps = happy.

And that's about as deep as my idea gets. Go with 4:35's.
 

Also, hire this one guy I know who still hunts and pecks...a typist.
 

P.S.: triple-post, but none of this throwing money at a problem will actually solve anything. So...why not give me some money? THANKS.
 

1 billion - what would I do.

I would hire a local architect to design our out buildings (woodworking shop and indoor endless pool building with decks and jacuzzi). I may have to grease the palms of the local county building permit people.

These would be green buildings using green materials (made in America).

I would then hire the local builder, who hires local sub contractors and completes the project. These are all Americans in neeed to work. After that there is landscaping involved (no illegal immigrants). We have 9 acres - that's a lot of landscaping. Trust me I have been digging up stumps that are inter-twined with ROCKS for the past 3 days.

Hum - I still have a lot of money left....
Modernizing schools comes to mind (something that isn't in one version of the stimulus package). To me, this does not mean building new schools (although in some cases total replacement may be advisable). It means putting in energy efficient windows and heating and cooling systems. Depending on where in the country this would include solar.

OK - I'm all about greening.

All of the products would have to be made in AMERICA and installed by Americans.
 

I like it, Christine. I can't figure out why they took out the school construction money, either. Like so many things, they probably think the local governments should pay for it. But the problem is that they haven't, because they've had other things to pay for, like special ed and paying teachers and complying with No Child Left Untested.
 

A billion? That's it? Where did the other 849 go?
 

The problem with the school construction money is that most of it won't be spent right away. Government construction projects take FOREVER!!!!

The Feds issue RFPs, accept bids, then there are bid protests and litigation. And after that's done, there are aguments about designs, etc. etc.

The only people getting paid are lawyers, contract people and maybe a few engineers. These are not the people who are hurting.

I liked the idea that the Porkulus money had to go to "shovel ready" projects. The local NPR station went with the Sec. Ed. to a high school in Arlington, Virginia yesterday and the kids were complaining about the temperatures in the classrooms. Give me a break. The high school in question could use some work, but the project is no where NEAR "shovel ready."
 

I understand the shovel-ready part, but was not building NEW schools.

I think the bureacracy involved doesn't make any stimulus money 'shovel-ready'. That is why recovery is going to take a very long time. It takes lots of synchronated cogs to make the wheel go round.

I own a shovel and I am ready to go use it right now. Time to dig out more stumps.
 

"The only people getting paid are lawyers, contract people and maybe a few engineers." So what's your point?
 

I am a lawyer and I am not getting paid.

Someone please hire me. I don't backtalk and can be made to do humiliating amounts of research and writing.
 

...and, indeed, lawyers are getting laid off in droves and some very large firms have dissolved or are in the process of dissolving. Do Thelen, Heller Ehrman, Morgan & Finnegan ring a bell? The rest of us are faced with pay and hiring freezes.

I feel for you Lane - I can't even send a resume upstairs to what used to be our active recruiting department for consideration without looking like a fool.
 

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Ok I posted one before but never mind it was stupid I like that idea that we create jobs for the retrofitting of GREENING everything up. and Fix the public schools.

And, as always, if you see some phone company guys in your neighborhood with an orange vest and a back hoe?

RUN.

Then find an attorney.