Saturday 7 February 2009

Yeah, because who would want to waste too much money on that?

"The fine print was not immediately available, and the numbers were shifting. But in essence, the Democratic leadership and two centrist Republicans announced they had struck a deal on about $110 billion in cuts to the roughly $900 billion legislation — a deal expected to provide at least the 60 votes needed to send the bill out of the Senate and into negotiations with the House, which has passed its own version.
The pact, which is expected to be approved in the next few days, was concluded just hours after the Labor Department announced that 598,000 jobs were lost in January. The contraction in jobs is already steeper than in any other recession since at least the early 1980s. And economists warn that several more shoes are about to drop, a message that added urgency to the Senate deliberations."

NY Times: Senators Reach Accord on Stimulus Plan as Jobs Vanish, February 6, 2009
My favourite moment of the past weeks: when Obama talked about the Stimulus plan and said something like: "You complain that stimulus means spending money? WELL, WHAT DO YOU THINK A STIMULUS IS?" Republicans still waved around with ideas like capital gain tax cuts. Because that is going to help the 100 000 people per week who have lost their job in the past three months. Rich people are famous for immediately spending every additional dollar they get, right?
By the way: the situation in Spain is getting worse every day too. BBC reported a 13,9 % unemployment rate on January 23 and, only a couple of days later, 14,4 % on February 3. The most cheerful sentence in the first article: "European Union says it could go as high as 19%". In other news, apparantly the one trade that is doing just fine is fast food chains. Isn't it great news that a burger is now cheaper than cooking your own food?

2 comments:

? said...

Thanks for this and I am following the developments on your blog too. Looking forward to your next post on the subject.

flame gun for the cute ones said...

How are things looking in GB? I haven't read any news about the British economy in the past weeks (but I am experiencing the whole currency exchange rate thing right now, with a pretty strong Norwegian Krona vs. a struggling Euro)