It was the Bush Administration (mostly Henry Paulson) and Wall Street executives urging Congress to pass the bill quickly; not Keynesian economists. Keynesian economists wouldn't have supported handing a blank check over to Wall Street they would've demanded government regulation, something Paulson didn't want and was adamant on not having. If there had been regulation the banks would have been forced to start lending and getting rid of the bad debt and we wouldn't be in a mess nearly as bad a one were in now.
I however never supported any form of bail out. The industries either should've gone into chapter eleven...which would have been very damaging to the economy but ultimately for the best considering what happened. What would have been better and preferable to me though if is they'd undergone temporary nationalization, until they were economically viable again. I also would've like to see a Glass-Steagall type act put back in place after these companies had been reorganized and the debt issues solved. If that act had never been repealed in the first place the financial industry wouldn't have crashed the way it did.
http://www.4ibew.com/2009/02/04/econ...ge-needed-now/
Economists Agree Time Is of the Essence for Stimulus - washingtonpost.com
Also our market place is far closer to Keynes than the Austrian School. So trashing Keynesian economists and praising Ron Paul is a bit silly...seeing as one of those groups is operating within the actual economic structure as opposed to a Libertarian fantasy land. I wouldn't want to live in a country where they experimented with the Austrian school economics. If we' done that all economic activity would come to an absolute halt. A lassiez-faire economic system isn't the solution. Adam Smith's unseen hand doesn't exist as manufacturers were able to rig the market place and monopolies were created. Smith himself even warned about this but offered no solution. These kind of economic systems drift towards bigness and fewness and class systems become an inheritance. So basically you have the poor kids going to poor schools (if their parents can afford since a system like this privatizes everything including schools) and the rich kids going off to the best schools in the country meaning they inherit not only their parents extreme amount of monopolized wealth, but also the government because they're the smart and rich ones and they're able to get elected. Extremist capitalism ultimately leads to an Oligarchy and there's no way to defeat that except without some sort of Marxist revolution which would lead to another imperfect extreme political philosophy: Communism.
It's also worth noting, while there are many many many individuals to blame for the bubble - Clinton and Bush's administration, the Congress throughout the 90s and 2000s and Barney Frank's complacency - the man at the forefront of it all, Alan Greenspan, was a Randist who spent his years as Chairman of the Federal Reserve deregulating and getting government out of the way...which is exactly what Ron Paul is proposing.
If you want to know where the money is going visit here
Recovery.gov and read about the package or listen to some of Obama's speech on it. It isn't a secret. As for where it's coming from that's also not a secret. There are four kinds of bonds (treasury bonds, treasury notes, treasury bills and treasury inflation protected securities.) These are all traded on secondary markets. Which basically means whoever the United States sells the debt to first will move it around for short term gain then sell it to a country already making money off US debt (countries like China, Japan or the United Kingdom.)
What the hope is with this stimulus package is, by putting and saving millions of American jobs, more money will continue to go into the market (this coupled with the tax cuts and tax increases on the rich shifting the burden back onto the wealthiest Americans) and the American economy will continue to prosper and then the debts can then be turned around and paid off. This isn't some secret under the table dealing with China or anything, it's a fairly straightforward system that is beneficial to both parties. We get the short term economic gain (in other words stimulus) to put us on a road to prosperity and in the long run the countries which lent to us get paid off and then some. The bonds are beneficial to the countries as well, China regulates their currency with treasury securities.
I haven't heard the bus driver story but if it's anything like I imagine it is then yes, he is too blame for simple stupidity but so are the banks (I imagine this money for the house was lent to him? If they didn't this kind of situation is still applicable to the amount of people struggling with mortgage payments.) It's not like the banks sat back and said "hey this is stupid, you'll never be able to pay for this house" instead they offered all their f
ucked up subprimesuperloans and told these people they could afford these things. To your average, uneducated and ignorant American, this sounds great. The American Disease breeds this sort of mindset that we all need a house and we all need this sort of lifestyle that we can't afford, particularly with the extreme wealth difference in this country.
The top 5% controls over 90% of the wealth and they're reaping all the benefits of the overall GDP. Ralph Nader has said we have a Welfare system for the rich and we do. Most people didn't listen to Nader, and to a lesser extent John Kerry though. We're in two wars right now and we're still operating under Bush tax cuts? This is a problem, especially when these tax cuts are for the wealth and corporations meaning they can afford to continue to hyperinflate the bubble and convince your average citizen to take out all these home equity loans and pay for things with credit cards. These people don't pay attention to the national debt clock and to them they thought they were getting richer, despite the fact the middle class was slowly slipping below the poverty line (which is something that is very disconcerting. A country can't lose it's middle class, Aristotle realized this first as being vital to a nation's well being and everyone from Adam Smith to Karl Marx agrees, though Marx would've stressed complete income equality as a solution but the point is a middle class is vital.) This is what happens when you create an economic bubble though, everyone has a wealth effect and doesn't realize it until the bubble ops that it was only an effect. It is going to take drastic policy shifts, and money, to get out of this this post-bubble-explosion economy were in. The solution isn't just letting things go though; we don't need another Robber Barons era in America.
I called you Hannity because of your constant insistence that I consider Obama to be some sort of Messiah; I don't. I didn't support him in the primaries until it came down to a race between Clinton and him. What's funny about this whole thing is you're attacking me for being a close-minded Democrat and getting off an independent high horse yet I'm not a Democrat. Since you're talking about political objectivity though I have some advice for you as well. Maybe you should take a look at your own posts and realize the ironies in it. Blind allegiance to a third party philosophy isn't any better than blind allegiance to one of the major two parties. Look at your own sources; a Libertarian website and Ron Paul. They're both uncompromising ideological and with an agenda, not exactly objective is it?
To clear this up, on fiscal matters I agree with the Democratic party more than I agree with the Republican party. However I'm in favor of a Social Democracy but I'm realistic enough to realize that won't ever happen. I'm not completely opposed to the idea of a free market, as long as it's very heavily regulated to avoid corruption and to protect citizens. In general though I feel the free market is unfair. Socially I'd consider myself a Libertarian, but I would be in favor of outlawing the production certain drugs (not the harmless ones, I'm talking heroin. I'm against it on principle the same way I'm against prescription pills that do nothing but take years off your life or ruin your body.) If I had to really describe myself though, bar the term blank-term independent, I'd say I was a Pragmatic Leftist.