A comment on the supposed “second stimulus” which isn’t a stimulus: Read the article proposing it, and you’ll see that all they are talking about is extending current plans that are set to expire.

They’re right, continuing to do the same thing while doing nothing new is certainly no “stimulus”. But it does drain quite a few more billion dollars from the treasury for – what? For programs that have already proved that they will create no jobs and have no effect at all on economic recovery. Why do I say proved? Because all of these programs are already in place, and it ain’t happening.

That’s what makes the current situation so hopeless – even the radical fixes being considered have not the slightest chance of changing the situation, which anyone with even the slightest bit of sense can prove with 5 minutes effort.

And it hasn’t even occurred to them that playing with the unemployment numbers doesn’t actually do anything, since unemployed people have a *real* and *daily* negative impact on the economy whether you count them or not. Obama and Axelrod still live in a world where image is all that matters, not reality, and they keep believing that if they can just manipulate the image enough, the reality will come around. News flash – only psychotics believe that’s the way the world really works.

That’s not to say there’s no fix at all for things, but the current pantheon of jokers has got to be swept from power before there is even a chance of anything positive happening.

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
Marcus Aurelius

The bottom line is that American unemployment is getting worse via business disinvestment — running down — of it’s capital so it can have reserves of cash to make up for a lack of credit and as a edge against uncertainty.

The unwillingness of the Obama Admistration to deal with the mortagage credit bubble, because the writting off of bad loans would hurt blue state Democrats more, is the heart of the reason why there is no loanable credit.

The unwillingless of higly credit worthy small businesses to apply for credit is due to the financial uncertainty caused by Obama domestic program priorities will cause huge unanticipated costs for any business expansion.

Obama’s _inactions_ here are a decision for what economic future we will have.

So we now have a Leftist domestic policy positive feedback loop for reduced economic activity that is cratering tax revenues at all levels of American government just as certainly as writting off bad mortages without lancing the boil of bad loans.