Obama's Stimulus Plan? More Like Deficit Plan

It has become abundantly clear that there will be an economic stimulus plan from the Obama Administration. The cost of this plan has varied but it has been reported to be around 800 billion to a trillion dollars. With the upcoming years budget estimated 1.2 trillion dollar deficit this would push that up to 2+ trillion dollars of deficit in ONE YEAR!

First of all, I don't believe that this plan would work to begin with. The details that have been reported have changed ever since it was first talked about but the main attention seems to be on infrastructure spending. Now spending money on updating bridges and fixing schools etc. isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the expectations on this to "jump start" the economy is just ridiculous.

Obama says that this plan will create OR SAVE up to 3 million jobs. The key word there is save jobs that could be lost if this obserd amount of money weren't spent. Now if you do the math on the trillion dollars into 3 million jobs this is costing 333,000 dollars per job! This definitely doesn't seem like the most efficient way to create jobs and get the economy growing again.

In my opinion, we should be going back to the days of Reaganomics where tax cuts are made to jump start the economy rather than throwing money away on a plan that I dont think will even work. On CNBC it was reported that if you take the estimated income on taxes this upcoming year it would be around 2 trillion dollars. Now if you take the cost of this plan and just cut taxes equal to that amount you could have everybody in the US pay NO taxes for half of the year and it would cost the same amount. Now if this were to be done what would happen?

First off, if people pay no taxes for six months they will most likely work as much as possible to take advantage of the no tax opportunity. Secondly, companies would also be included in this tax break and would more than likely hire more people and do more business. Now with this idea, why would the economy not be jump started? I would be naive to think that it wouldn't

I'm just trying to put into perspective how crazy this plan sounds and what a waste of money it is. Think about it.

Four Christmases Movie Review

**** out of 5

I went and saw Four Christmases on Friday night. It stars Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon and it was kind of odd to me that they were cast together because I wouldn't normally expect to see them in the same movie. Vince Vaughn, however, is one of my favorite actors and most everything he does I think is hilarious. Wedding Crashers and Old School are two of my favorites.

Back to the story, These two are in a relationship and have made it clear to one another that they don't want to get married or have kids. They'd rather just be together to have fun and not be bound by anything. They get drug into going to all of their parents (who are both divorced) christmases, hence the name. Each one brings some kind of problem or skeletons from the past in both of their lives. Vinces brothers beat him up which is absolutely hilarious since he isn't a small guy. Reese's character used to be fat and other little secrets are revealed that neither knew about eachother.

The movie goes on and each house brings up more issues between the couple and by the end they get into an argument about wanting to have kids or get married but eventually they see eye to eye about it and everything works out.

The movie does have an underlying sappy story to it but there are a lot of laughs and funny lines. I'd recommend anybody who likes comedy to see this movie. Especially if you love Vince Vaughn.

Give it 4 out of 5 stars

New Material Soon

I plan to have weekly movie reviews that I'll write on a lighter note for a more laid back post.

Foreclosure Problem

Foreclosures have been one of the major causes of the recent stock market obliteration. Banks have been widely blamed for giving loans that people could not afford that allowed the borrower to pay interest only for a few years when thereafter the principal began being added increasing the monthly bill. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have also been a very large part of this problem.

Something that is overlooked for the most part is the fact that people are trying to live to much of a lavish lifestyle when they can't afford it. Instead of living the life they can afford many Americans use credit to buy things that they really shouldn't buy. This applies to home buying as well.

Why is it that there are so many foreclosures? People are buying houses that they really can't afford and were tricked by attractive monthly payments that were advertised for these subprime loans that they didn't fully understand before they dove right in buying expensive houses. Then when these bills increased after the principal started being figured in these people could no longer afford to pay their mortgage and therefore had to leave their homes.

The true lesson here that many Americans need to learn is to read fine print on any contract, especially on a purchase as large as a home, and to stop using credit to live beyond their means. In reality these homeowners are to blame for this housing bubble and it bursting for buying houses that they couldn't truly afford.

Auto Bailout has another problem that nobody has the guts to call out

I have been listening to the breaking news about the auto loan situation since it came about and very rarely do I hear people talking about what I think is the real problem, let alone agree with what I think about it. In my opinion the UAW is a very large part of the original problem. My reasonings for this are simple. 1. Toyota and Honda and other foreign auto makers have made money over the last 5-10 years whereas US companies havent. 2. The average hourly rate including all benefits and retirement costs for Toyota are in the mid 40s where GMs are in the lower 70s. 3. Why is it that only the US companies need money at this time, because they are the ones that have had problems prior to this change of events.

These points make a strong case that the union just takes too much out of these companies for them to make steady profits especially with all the research and design they do for new cars and technologies. How does somebody who sits and watches a machine put a part on all day deserve 30 dollars or more an hour plus benefits and retirement. It just doesnt make sense. And people wonder why the foreign auto makers can make more profits and arent in this situation, it's because THEY ARE NOT PART OF THE UAW.

Bankruptcy is the best option for these companies because that is the only way they will truly restructure and put together a business model that can make profits in this new economic environment. And the best way to make that model better in my humble opinion is to make more fuel efficient cars, work on getting alternative fuel vehicles on the market quickly and NOT HAVE EMPLOYEES THAT ARE MEMBERS OF THE UAW. I think this would solve everything and allow them to make more profits than ever.