Economic Stimulus: The Best That Might Come of It

[Post Summary]

I called him, but he gave me no answer.
—Song of Solomon

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Probably the most valuable thing to be gained from a $1 trillion economic stimulus package is sight of the size of the deficit in infrastructure investment deferred over recent decades.

How did this deficit come to be? Quite simply, when our casino economy was running on all cylinders, it made "sense" to channel investment capital into it. And this largely was done at the expense of infrastructure maintenance and improvement.

Suddenly, however, the casino has shut down. The capacity to inflate credit securities — for years the casino's lifeblood — has reached its inevitable limit. So, seeing some movement toward more stable forms of investment — infrastructure — is at least a sign sanity still can have a moment in America. This is a plus.

This is not to say the means by which this investment will be financed is sound policy. A truly viable economic investment initiative should be financed on a capital account, not on the current account.

So, from this perspective you might find me sympathetic with Kudlow's objection (although this Monetarist Monkey's fret over public credit needs crowding out private interests is so irrelevant in the current environment it is laughable).

Which leads to the second valuable thing that could come from the $1 trillion economic stimulus package currently making its way through Congress...

Kudlow's crazed protestations might result in his suffering an on-air aneurysm. Then, of course, there would be one less apologist for imperial finance promoting principally un-American economic ideologies to a public largely unaware of its own national identity.

Kudlow is strictly "British School" and this, even 233 years later, any American worth his salt still finds offensive. His accommodation to thinking representing that which this nation was formed to oppose now has been moved into position to become more readily known. His time to exit a disgrace has come. Lord knows he has earned it.

These days all manner of tyranny stands exposed. In the face of necessity requiring a $1 trillion stimulus package — this on top of trillions of dollars dedicated to "emergency economic stabilizations" — the same, tired voices (apparently out of habit) continue echoing those failed ideologies that brought us to this extraordinarily vulnerable moment in the first place.

The opportunity to subdue such thinking as is proven to breed fraud is arrived. Indeed, the speed at which a $1 trillion stimulus bill is to become law announces this fact. It's a moment not given to every generation. Start thinking like an American. Speak up.

—Tom Chechatka