View From The Middle
Yeah, We Know. It's The Stupid Economy!
By Charles Rogers

The New York Stock Exchange, along with other America financial headquarters, was closed last Monday in commemoration of the holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Good thing.

It gave the marketers - or marketeers - a chance to breathe before heading back into the fray that saw the Dow Jones close at 12,099.30, down more than 300 points, at 4 p.m. Friday. The nail-biters were probably afraid of what things might portend three days later.

Luckily, they were able to take their minds off the ugly subject by watching the Giants beat Green Bay Sunday.

But that doesn't take away the ultimate pain of opening on Tuesday after seeing the overseas markets also closing in a panic Monday, afraid to find out what the U.S. would be doing after the holiday. (Panic is not really a good word to use nowadays. It might lead to the next bad word: suicide).

Last week, President Bush tried to assuage the hearts and minds of the American public by telling us he, and his administration, has a handle on our financial plight - brought on by the subprime mortgage crisis recently, plus our weak holiday shopping season, not to mention (oh, yeah!) the Iraq War. The Republican president proposed an "economic stimulus package" to the Democratic Congress that would put some quick money into the pockets of the consumers - more or less, the middle and a-little-less-than-middle class consumers - so they might spend it and get the nation's economy going again. And, get this: the Congress is apparently going along with it!

What they want to do is take $150 billion (with a "b"), make out millions of checks - in $800 and $1,600 increments - and put 'em in the mail to every person and couple who paid taxes last year. Essentially, that's you and me.

As for those who legitimately did not pay taxes, they will work out just how they will get the money, the cash, to spend.

According to Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat), the plan looks pretty much like a good thing, with just a few kinks to be worked out. Both his Legislative Branch and Bush's Executive Branch seem to think it might be just the ticket, as long as people don't just take the money and put it under the mattress for a rainy day. Oh, they can pay off a few bills if they want, but the main focus of the operation is to get cold, hard cash distributed, well, just about everywhere.

Now, we know that consumer spending is slowing down. People are losing jobs, too. With a little cash (let's face it, $800 is pretty substantial) to spend in a store or restaurant or whatever for something you might not have been able to afford otherwise, you get the ripple effect, and that store owner will maybe be able to hang onto his business and, yes, the economy will be invigorated.

Monday, all those foreign money markets, from Asia to Europe, were not on a holiday, so they traded like mad. I suppose traded would not be the working word here, since all they seemed to do was sell , sell, sell. It was a natural thing to do, of course, since since they heard that the world's biggest, most productive economy (that's us) is in deep trouble. That's the way it works: If we go into a recession, the whole world feels like they're receding too. Early Tuesday morning, as a matter of fact, because of the global selling, the Dow Jones had fallen by nearly 500 points by the time the New York Stock Exchange opened.

The Federal Reserve, however, figured this was going to happen and had already started the rescue wheels going. They immediately cut interest rates so that, by the time 4 p.m. came around, the market here closed down only (only?) a mere 128 points.

It will take a while for the dust to settle, if the everyday consumer and Big Business can let a few bucks go. The market will have some bad times and some good. Eventually, we hope, Mrs. Jones will buy that washing machine she's always wanted and Mr. Maytag will hire more people to make washing machines.

It all seems to be a push in the right direction....except.. where are we getting the original $150 billion (with a "b") bucks?

The national debt is over $9 trillion. I suppose we can just, uh, print the money! Just get out the green and black ink and that funny, threaded paper and run the sheets into the printing machine (maybe it's just a great, big Epson) and, voila! We got the dough! Problem solved!

Hey...what's a few billion bucks, more or less?

As Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone With The Wind, "Tomorrow is another day..."=