To Jolt Economy, Obama and Congress Eye Billions in Infrastructure Spending

Cutler's comment sounds good...

Cutler's custom modular housing sounds good. A tax incentive would help. My lifetime project about employment is to reduce population. That way, we break the historic pattern of "too many people for too few jobs." I want Congress to invest taxes in free sex-education, free contraception, free voluntary sterilization and free abortion. There are too many consumers in every nation, and too many paupers who collect foreign aid from us at tax expense. But Ban-Abortion churches want to force women to continue producing generations of people who take the place of tithers who die or lose faith. Every nation can benefit from having nicely-designed modular houses, made in a thrifty way, easily transported and put in place. Best wishes to Mr. Cutler, back East.

Stimulus

We are a small architectural firm in Wilton CT seeking government work. We have a unigue specialty in designing custom modular built housing. This would be a perfect fit for military or embesy housing. For over 6 months we have marketed to government agentcies and submitted RFPs. With little or no feedback. The few answers we have gotten back from government contract officers are the stimulus money has been not released yet. We have invested 100's of hours and over 100,000 dollars to get government work in addition to employing service providers to help. As of yet NOTHING!

Is there simply too many applicants? or do you need special connections? The government has so called systems in place such as FAR to keep oppourtunities fair for all small business. Does this really work in practice? We knew this was not going to be easy but. We now question this approach to getting business, perhaps targeted tax incentives would do much better to help the economy than slogging through this bidding process. We are running out of time and money with seeking goverment oppourtunities, I will soon have to lay off the balance of my staff and shut down.

It is a shame that the skill sets developed will go to waste.

Obama's New New Deal, will be Old, Old

After the environmental impact studies that the far left environmentalist demand, the funds "might" jolt the economy in 3 - 5 years. Then add to the fact that the quoted projects will end up being 3-4 times the original quoted cost, just look at the visitor center in DC.

That's going to do a lot of good for the economy.

"Change We Can Believe In"

BTW, the Stock Market is not the Economy, it seems that most American’s think they are one in the same.

Too bad we don't have ole John McCain to just freeze everything, ain't it. Chicago transportation is pork barrel spending, ain't it. Imagine how much further backwards we could go with a good freeze.

By the way, the comment above is as good as the article. And the private sector IS all speculation. Always has been.

Jose D. Roncal

Obama Plan Sends markets Up, But for How Long?

The big news of Monday was the DOW hitting the 9,000 mark. The big question now is, “Have we hit bottom”? Our answer is, “Maybe, but don’t rush into anything on a single day’s news just because you’re worried that you might miss out.”

The pundits tell us, "The market is a discounting mechanism." But relying on market "fundamentals" falls far short of explaining what’s really happening. Colorful trend charts can’t gauge the true intentions of buyers and sellers, and plugging in discount rates, risk premiums or annualized growth rates into a formula is no measure of the true fair market value of a financial asset.

But there are a few facts that the market has apparently already discounted which might explain the rally of the past few days:

• Monday: Stocks Rally Worldwide, DOW hits 9,000, S&P 500 hits 1-Month High on Obama Plan

• The market withstood the 533,000 job loss report on Friday—worse than expected

• Obama presented a proposed stimulus package with the largest expenditures on U.S. infrastructure since the 1950's

• Over the weekend the Asian markets rallied, China announced expansions of stimulus package and India has approved it’s own $4 billion of stimulus infusion

• The future is uncertain for the NASCAR race car economy. Formula 1 is the first victim as Honda has pulled a $300 million plug

• A $15 billion bridge loan for the Big 3 U.S. Automakers will be voted on next week, which if signed would tide the industry over only until March 09

• Dow Chemical is slashing 11% of its workforce and shutting down 20 facilities

• Advertising expenditures are way down and today’s retail sales report was enough to harsh Main Street’s holiday buzz

The worldwide crisis isn’t going to get fixed over night. I expect further volatility in the days ahead. For instance, when corporate earnings are released in January, it could trigger more volatility. Things are likely to continue like this well into 2009 or 2010. You may agree as you consider the following:

• U.S. bailout packages have been bridges to nowhere

• First stimulus package of $160 billion led nowhere

• New structure of financial industry still not addressed

• Regulators and credit rating agencies don’t have their act together—the 23rd U.S. bank failed last week

• States like California and many others are going broke, if they haven’t already, and urgently need life-support

• Corporations are filing for chapter 11 or chapter 7 due to inept executives who claim they couldn’t foresee this coming

• Risk management is non-existent in most organizations today – “surprises” are becoming the new standard

• GM and Chrysler (even with the expected bailout) will be back for more sooner than later

• Commercial lending, even though better collateralized than residential lending, could bring the issue of their $900 billion credit cards debt to the handout table.

• Expect further losses and write-downs from JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup as well as other major financial institutions

I could go on and on without even mentioning our under-funded heath care system and other government program. There are simply not enough funds to do everything.

A situation that began as a housing crisis has turned into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. More than $31 trillion has evaporated through equity and debt losses. And the write-downs on the books of the world largest lenders and investors is approaching $1 trillion. We’d never want to be accused of saying, “We told you so!” but the fact remains that all of this was predicted in our book "The Big Gamble: Are You Investing or Speculating?” I’ve always maintained, that in the end, it’s all speculation.

Comments (0)