Walmart CEO

"Our customers are running out of money."

My take on the economic issues is pretty simple - and very well may be wrong - but the government bailouts and stimulus were designed to protect the stock market and the homeowners, ie stock holders and home owners. The cost of doing so was to increase the money supply, thereby driving up costs, ie causing inflation and we are seeing it in gas prices, food prices, and other commodities. (Note: situation in the ME also is contributing to gas prices)

Since commodity prices (or taxes) are inherently regressive (they are felt more by the poor than the rich), you could make a fairly sensible argument that the bulk of government spending served to transfer money from the poor to wealthy. Not a direct transfer, but a protection of a certain class of assets/wealth at the expense of future prices.

Not that it was the intention of the Obama Administration to do so. They also extended unemployment benefits and there were residual effects of certain bail outs to middle class jobs (GM) and probably some residual employment gains by protecting the stock market and not letting firms fail. And it is also true that it is much harder to help the poor than help the rich because frankly, the rich tend to make better decisions with their money (which is why they are often rich in the first place) and have more options with their money (which makes it easier to make better decisions). And perhaps the idea was to protect the rich in the short run knowing that in the long run, we're going to make up most of the debt by taxing the wealthiest when the economy starts chugging again.

But doesn't it just seem easier to let some of these markets bottom out? Especially the housing market. Everyone got so up in arms about people "losing their homes." By definition, these weren't people's homes. Renters get kicked out of their homes all the time. What is so precious about living spaces? If you lived in your home for 10-20 years and your kids are in school and you are invested in your community, I get the issue. But in those cases, it doesn't strike me you'd be underwater with your mortgage. And if you were, well, whose fault is that? So let the market bottom out. Let these lame companies like GM fail. If I fail as a screenwriter, no one is going to bail me out. Even if, by some folks argument, GM is now chugging along fine. Yeah...maybe if someone gave me 100,000 to live for 3 years, I could produce a good screenplay. Guess what? No one is doing that and certainly not the government. In fact, I'd give myself better odds than GM. The cost is what other companies could do in the place of GM or in place of me as a screenwriter. That's the issue - that it's totally anti-competitive.