Wonks Anonymous has noted a great deal of grousing about the content of Obama's budget and economic proposals. We are told that he is inciting fear in order to push through liberal policies on energy health care and the environment. One Hearst commentator even compares him to someone who is bargaining with distraught parents before he rescues their child from a well - memo to the SF Comical you might get more readers if you lost these clowns.

We are told that he should be concentrating on rescuing the financial markets - last time Wonks anonymous looked these guys were doing just fine but not lending any money just now, thank you - or that he should be concentrating on raising housing prices. Which prices aren't coming back for some time.

And in the meantime we have serious problems with inadequate demand. People hold on to their income and do not spend it. Financial intermediaries - wonkspeak for banks - don't want to lend these savings to investors and many investors don't want to commit to real projects. Savings sit idle and demand drops. when demand drops income drops and - Oh you know the rest of this story if you read this blog.

Fiscal policy is intended to create demand for goods and services. It works in two ways: The government spends more than it would have creating direct demand for goods and services and the government cuts taxes which, hopefully, leads consumers to spend more.

Fiscal policy does not work unless the government spends more and/or collects less tax revenue than it would have otherwise.

Effective fiscal policy requires a temporary increase in the deficit. Changes in banking will not rescue us at this point. We need effective fiscal policy.

Toward the end of October two alternative forms of fiscal policy were effectively outlined by the presidential candidates. John McCain proposed permanent tax cuts, target mainly at better off citizens. These included major cuts in the corporate tax and capital gains taxes. Barak Obama campaigned for increases in spending on education, health care and energy conservation.

If John McCain had won the election we would have seen a stimulus policy composed mainly of tax cuts. If Wonks Anonymous is not hallucinating, Barak Obama won the election.

And Barak Obama has the obligation to stimulate the economy. He could stimulate the economy by building giant statues of great figures of the Democratic party in every city -I would love to see the reaction to a larger than life Nancy Pelosi in Alabama - or by increasing spending on missile defenses. He could establish a federal program to buy goods and destroy them. Any sort of spending would stimulate the economy.

But Obama is not a wasteful man. He seems to want to spend our stimulus dollars on projects like infrastructure, education and energy conservation that he believes will leave us better off in the future.

Conservative critics may disagree with his priorities but the fact remains: Barak Obama won the election. Americans seem to agree with his priorities.