Now we have Obama's proposed 825$ billion stimulus that is being debated in Congress; and on paper it looks better, since money seems to be intended to go to various 'productive' projects like education, infrastructure maintenance, etc.
I already wrote in the previous post about my distrust for any centrally planned initiatives, and about the dangers of fiscal recklessness, but for the moment I want to leave these aside and present you with a little piece from Bloomberg about how government projects actually work in practice: Hidden Bonuses Enrich U.S. Government Contractors. Here comes the choice cut:
...the government spent $368.4 billion on all contracts in 2008, and Republican Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn estimates that about $100 billion of that was wasted.
US government actually managed to dwarf the numbers that caused recent outrage about Wall Street bonuses: 16$ billion in bonuses, compared to unknown trillions of taxpayer money spent on maintaining the financial system alive.
That is why I don't believe Obama's TARP will be more ethical than Paulson's. Money is still going to line up the pockets of the bureaucrats, just slightly different ones.
There is a way to effectively spend money for economy stabilization, but it is not what the corrupt politicians in Washington are doing. We could have much more bang for the buck spending this money where it really helps, but I probably should write a separate post about it.
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