Uh, yeah. That’s kinda the point, innit?

We should be fixing what’s broken (The Fed, the banking system, Freddie & Fannie, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, grossly underfunded pensions, and the list goes on) before spending money on new crap. It’s like when you see these guys rollin’ with 20″ rims and low profile tires (that you know cost at least $5K) on a 1985 Honda Civic with the muffler hanging on by twist ties and a broken windshield.

Yeah it would be great to give everybody whatever the “f” they want, but we G-damn can’t afford it. We’re living on top of a house of cards sitting on quick sand with a tornado bearing down upon us.

One big question: Will the boost evaporate once the programs end?

Stuart Hoffman, chief U.S. economist for PNC Financial Services Group, said the stimulus package “caused this bit of a concentrated burst [that] probably will exaggerate the pace of economic growth,” since some areas, such as auto sales, could fall back to low levels.

Unpossible! That’s never happened, ever! It’s not like Congress ever has anything to gain by a short term appearance of economic progress.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125185379218478087.html

I claim Kentucky.

Or, we can flush the banks and put all the money in our mattresses into productive enterprises like building cars and teevees that nobody has any money to buy. That’s the ticket.

“In each and every instance of recession from 1970 onward we have “pulled forward” more and more demand and created fake “prosperity” through the creation of ever more debt that we have goaded consumers to take on. By doing so we have crippled the ability of the economy to grow, redirecting as much money as possible to a handful of people and firms (commonly known as “banks” and other “financial companies”) instead of directing that effort and money into productive enterprises such as building cars, television sets and similar items.

THIS time though the recession didn’t come from “ordinary business conditions”; it instead happened because the credit carrying capacity among both consumers and businesses hit the wall – they could no longer make the debt service payments and started to default.

It began with “subprime” mortgages but that was nothing other than the first “hiss” of trouble out of the pressure vessel as the structural integrity of the fraud-laced credit system, where “capacity to pay” became a bad joke, had begun to disintegrate.

We pushed the envelope of fraudulent credit creation and the sale of fraudulently-underwritten debt too far – and it blew up in our collective faces!

Rather than admit complicity in the myriad Ponzi-style scams that underlay all of the financial system for more than thirty years (or have it shoved in their face) The Fed and financial “wizards” along with The Bush Administration (who was responsible for and complicit in refusing to fix the fraud during the 00-07 timeframe) chose to try to sweep it under the rug with “yet more liquidity” and “yet more lending.”

President Obama and his administration made a critical error after having won in November by refusing to stand up and take these scammers on face-to-face. He decided to instead continue and even accelerate the scam!”

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/

Meanwhile, DOW 9,300.

Dennis? Dennis?