leogodin.net

I was reading this article from The Politico and found a great modern day saying that always makes me shiver. “We’re At War” says Joe Biden.

“Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander said Biden “was speaking of how after September 11th, that the Congress came together and worked together for the sake of the country”

I have to say, I feel much better about our economic prospects now that Congress thinks we’re at war. After all, when Congress declares war they really mean it… right? The war on drugs? How’s that going? The war on poverty? Any progress there? How about the war on terror? You see where I’m going with this. We have a modern tradition of declaring any large problem that can be exploited for votes a war and then screwing it up. This is how we’ve run since the 1980s at least.

While Congress and the Fed are wasting away trillions of dollars (yes that is trillions not 700 billion) banks are not lending and jobs are not being created. This “war” on the bad economy is going to cost us more money than the Iraq war (oops I mean conflict since Congress doesn’t have the integrity to declare or deny an actual war).

So what’s on tap in this war on bad economy? Nobody is saying much. Obama plans to rebuild roads and schools and that ought to create jobs but will give most of the money to large corporations. If we leave it up to Congress the money will again go to large multi-national corporations with no benefit the the US taxpayer.

Here is the Leo Godin economic stimulus plan. If we start from the assumption that Congress and the Fed has to print and throw away more money (which is a bad assumption but the one we are working with) lets give the money where it will have the most direct benefit, small businesses. Let’s open the economic floodgates and provide easy to obtain small business loans and grants. Lets take a quarter of the money that is spent bailing out the global economy and use it to bail out US citizens. Small businesses create jobs and spread the wealth. Even if 75% of new small businesses fail I suspect we’d still create more jobs than bailing out large investment banks.