Posted 1/31/2009 06:08:00 PM by Douglas

Barry's having a hard time trying to figure out how to spend your money to fix the economy.

President Barack Obama on Saturday promised to lower mortgage costs, offer job-creating loans for small businesses, get credit flowing and rein in free-spending executives as he readies a new road map for spending billions from the second installment of the financial rescue plan.

The White House is deciding how to structure the remaining half of the $700 billion that Congress approved last year to save financial institutions and lenders. An announcement was possible as early as this coming week on an approach that would use a range of tools to unfreeze credit, helping families and businesses.

Spend your way out of debt! I can't see what could go wrong with that! I like India's take:

The Keynesian prescription for recession obliges the government to play the role of the big spender by financing large public projects whose only job it is to generate employment, which in turn, fingers crossed, will stimulate demand and help restart the stalled economic merry-go-round. The classic example of such intervention is paying a hundred workers to dig a hole and then paying another hundred workers to fill up the hole.

Ah, the classic Keyensian nightmare that prolonged the depression in the 1930s and made it "Great!"