Doing What They Do Best
So we have already spent about $350 billion on the financial market bailout and gotten very little in the way of assets, toxic or otherwise. Still the lobbyists swarm about the treasury like files around fresh roadkill.
Although the whole enterprise does not really seem to have loosened the credit markets by very much it appears to be a sort of a jobs program - lobbyists are now fully employed and of course they take their friends out to meals and site visits etc. In fact it is already playing out in a manner like that envisioned by John Maynard Keynes in his General Theory (p 116 of the Google books version)
Except that digging money out of mine shafts would employ a great many more people who are actually unemployed.
This is a rather expensive way to create jobs and the governing elites are already at pretty much full employment so we will no doubt need to do something else.
Rumors from the Obama administration - conveyed by Paul Krugman - indicate that the Obama administration is prepared to spend about $300 billion on stimulus. Krugman's back of the envelope calculations put the needed amount at about $600 billion.
Wonks Anonymous has a humble suggestion. We have already spent about $350 billion of the bailout. Congress needs to review this spending and approve spending the next $350. The Treasury has indicated that it will leave this process to the new administration. We may count the $350 billion already spent as more or less lost. We have stopped a financial meltdown but any further spending on the financial markets will not increase employment or national welfare.
Let us take the next $350 billion plus the $300 billion that Obama proposes to spend on jobs and spend it all on investments in infrastructure and on retooling our auto industry to produce energy efficient cars and public transportation vehicles. By all means spend it as wisely as possible - which means keeping an eye on the Democratic and Republican pork industry - but try to spend it on projects that create jobs and leave us with real assets.
Although the whole enterprise does not really seem to have loosened the credit markets by very much it appears to be a sort of a jobs program - lobbyists are now fully employed and of course they take their friends out to meals and site visits etc. In fact it is already playing out in a manner like that envisioned by John Maynard Keynes in his General Theory (p 116 of the Google books version)
If the treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish and leave it to private enterprise on well tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right being obtained of course by tendering leases for the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions the real income of the community would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there were political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.
Except that digging money out of mine shafts would employ a great many more people who are actually unemployed.
This is a rather expensive way to create jobs and the governing elites are already at pretty much full employment so we will no doubt need to do something else.
Rumors from the Obama administration - conveyed by Paul Krugman - indicate that the Obama administration is prepared to spend about $300 billion on stimulus. Krugman's back of the envelope calculations put the needed amount at about $600 billion.
Wonks Anonymous has a humble suggestion. We have already spent about $350 billion of the bailout. Congress needs to review this spending and approve spending the next $350. The Treasury has indicated that it will leave this process to the new administration. We may count the $350 billion already spent as more or less lost. We have stopped a financial meltdown but any further spending on the financial markets will not increase employment or national welfare.
Let us take the next $350 billion plus the $300 billion that Obama proposes to spend on jobs and spend it all on investments in infrastructure and on retooling our auto industry to produce energy efficient cars and public transportation vehicles. By all means spend it as wisely as possible - which means keeping an eye on the Democratic and Republican pork industry - but try to spend it on projects that create jobs and leave us with real assets.
Hear, hear!
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