Felling Stimulated Yet?

Here is a link to the conference report for the $787 billion stimulus bill. Yesterday, congressional staffers were complaining that they couldn't get ahold of the report. But here it is, courtesy of ProPublica.

Caution: big files, as befits the insufficient but big bucks.

Now, you may ask, why do I have a big picture of a brain at the top of this post? Because, as every teenage male eventually learns, stimulation is a function of the brain. To stimulate the economy, people need to feel stimulated. Much as I admire our new president, I just don't know if anything he's done so far is going to stimulate us into spending, lending and so forth.

I tend to agree with Newsweek that we are "all socialists now." But that presupposes a boldness that Obama has not shown. His Treasury Secretary has yet to demonstrate that he is going to do a better job of salvaging the financial system than his predecessor. His stimulus plan is widely believed to be inadequate.

No wonder the market is in the doldrums and no, that's not "Wall Street" talking, that's the financial markets being unstimulated.

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.