Conservative Donnybrook

for everyone!

The particulars are starting to appear less thrilling than Uncle Barry’s promises at first appeared at the SOTU.
For example: the second stimulus proposal appears to be simply another TARP for smaller banks, most of which only carry around 80% debt (as compared to the Big Boys, who carry around 92%). The small banks don’t want it, and they will sit on it rather than loan it, just like the Big Boys did. Anyone out there building a new high-rise because you got a loan in the past six months? Didn’t think so. Neither will anyone be financing all new office furniture, office equipment, tools, raw materials like wire or PVC with any new loans from the new “stimulus.” Example 2: the hinted at nuclear power plant boom is apparently contingent on Republicans playing ball and voting for crap-and-tax, er, cap-and-trade. Sure, the two “could” be separated. And Uncle Barry might sprout a third arm and use it to reach across the aisle, too. Example 3: targeted tax cuts (which won’t work) attached to the dangling carrot of capital gains rate reductions. Along with those few select rate cuts are other rate hikes and permanent extensions of further entitlements for the dependent class in the form of “tax cuts” for people who never pay them to begin with (i.e., more spending under the moniker “tax cut.”) Aren’t words wonderful things, Humpty-Dumpty?