Stimulate This...

Stimulus is being asked for by everyone: from the porn industry to the hoes on the street, wall street. It seems though that everyone is still missing the reason we are in this pickle. People are quick to point out that trickle-down principles have largely failed but still they refuse to take the next logical step; power to the people.

So called bad mortgages were targeted as the reason for the beginnings of Wall Street’s problems. They have been labeled as toxic and home owners as stupid. These all only true when you ignore the monetary policy touted by banks and championed by conservatives.

For the last 30+ year’s free money has been sold to the public in the form of credit cards, falling interest rates and pay day loans. At the same time incomes, liquid assets (real hard money), has been stagnant. In lieu of cash we have turned to various products to make ends meet.

Economies are driven by demand.

We need to drive up demand. Poor schmoes like me tend to spend all the cash we have as seen by the recent years of negative savings. Some claim it's not a big deal but they are wrong. In short, people need for: food, mortgages, leisure, gas and home bills to name a few. Perhaps we would all throw some more in our 401ks and Roth IRAs with some money left in our pockets.

The point is that disposable income in the hands of many will do the economy good. The Bush administration and the 110th Congress tried to do just that with stimulus checks. This has largely been seen as a failure as people squirreled away the one-time giveaway. It is human nature to pay off the most overdue bill first if given a bit of an extra cash injection but if we could expect an extra bit on a regular basis we would be better off.

This is not to say that there should be bi-weekly or monthly stimulus checks; that would be insanity. Americans need to be paid more and also weened off credit and overspending. How is that done?

Funny enough (At least in light of "conventional wisdom," but we see where conventional wisdom has brought us.), some say that the best way to go about it is raising taxes on big businesses and forcing them to keep the money in the company rather than cashing out. An incentive to take smaller quarterly bonuses but investing in the longevity and productivity of the company instead of the huge payoff. I am not so concerned with how it gets done but it needs to get done for us to truly get out of the mess we are in.