The tax tax break home purchasing is a terrible idea too. If you decrease the demand for rentals and increase the demand for new homes, have you helped the economy?

These are the parts of our economy that are OVER producing, eg, we make way too many cars. 50% more cars were made in 2007 than were made in 2002. That’s too many. A ton of houses were built too. Those were too many. You can’t solve that problem with tax breaks.

I have a problem with a tax cut for new car buyers. First, most of the new cars sold won’t be from Chrysler or GM which are the companies most in need of federal assistance. Foreign brands that are assembled in the US will help employment but sales of cars made in Germany, Korea, Japan, etc. actual depress sales of US made cars.

Another objection is who the tax cut targets. Some folks that buy new cars are wealthy enough that they didn’t need the extra incentive anyway so the only stimulus will be trickle down Reaganomics. Another big group that buys new cars are those sucked in by the buy now pay five times more later. A car depreciates at least 30% as soon as it drives off the lot but lured in by nothing down drive home with a rebate incentives people who “can’t afford” a one or two year old car jump on the revolving credit merry go round. This sort of stimulus for the credit industry isn’t sustainable.

An across the board tax cut makes more sense. Let rural America (like Bellevue ;-) decide between a new car or a new tractor.

Spend any time in rural America and the “Cars are Evil” falls pretty flat. I suppose we should make cars really expensive so everybody will walk, bike, train or bus around their towns but that is not a realistic scenario for many communities in this country. If you live in a town like Aledo, Illinois, or Mount Pleasant, Iowa, you drive. No one is building light rail in rural communities and bus systems are either non-existant or very bare bones.

Perhaps a tax credit like this should only be available to those in rural areas instead of dense, urban ones (although you could certainly have some constitutional questions in that case). Or maybe this type of credit needs to be coupled with higher fuel standards or other incentives to create more efficient or cleaner cars. But I think the idea that we should never do anything that would assist people in buying a car is very shortsighted. Some people in this country drive 15 or 20 miles accross farmland to a job in another town. Transit isn’t a realistic option.

As someone that has lived in some of the smallest towns in this country and in some of its biggest cities, I’m disappointed that we forget that not everyone lives in areas with public transit options. And not everyone that buys a car is evil or stupid or just wants an SUV…perhaps they just need a way to get from point A to point A?

Anyway, the FDIC comment applies to anyone with serious money. In a high-risk environment a “zero-risk” 0% yield is a pretty good deal, unless you think the dollar is going in the toilet.

Anyway, I think it was basically an anomaly, something like a -0.01% yield that was quickly arbitraged away.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00035

WTF Murray? Think America doesn’t have enough cars as it is?

I think the government was pretty generous with the railroads back in the 70′s when the freight system was on the verge of collapse. We may not have squat for passenger rail but our freight system is the envy of the world.

So about $61.5 billion.

Why? That would be redundant legislation and might muck up the great system we already have ;-)

Those idiots aren’t so stupid. They’re spending billions on buying votes (or securing “speaking fees” and limo service) at a time when most of the country believes that more deficit spending can’t happen fast enough. Who cares what it’s spent on; it’ll restart our economic engine.

next we need a bill that encourages bankers to give loans to people who can’t afford them and to give a tax break for those who invest in ponzi schemes.