Is there a currency bubble? (Updates below)

[Crossposted from Sugar Land is Dreaming]

While some people on the left don't like it because they're assholes, others on the left have better reasons to be leery about the bipartisan stimuluis package that Bush, Reid, and Pelosi just gave to us. Jon Stewart summed up part of my thoughts perfect on last night's Daily Show. Here's a video clip of it -- forward it to the 2:00 mark to see Jon's description:


For me, there's also the matter of how the government giving us some table scraps of money is going to jump start our economy. While I love money as much as the next person, especially since I'm having trouble paying rent right now, when I get this stimulus check I'm not exactly going to spend it on needless widgets in fancy colors. It's going into my savings account, where it won't have an immediate effect on our economy -- therefore I'm not helping the country out of a recession. I imagine a lot more people will be stashing away their stimulus check, too. So Bush, Reid, and Pelosi: How is this package supposed to help the country avoid a recession?

Between this stimulus package and the Fed lowering the interest rate, what the government has done this past week is pumped yet more currency into an economy that's so flooded with currency already that the US dollar is now weaker than its Canadian counterpart. And what prompted the government to do this? The spread and increasing amounts of currency in the first part of this decade -- there was so much goddamn money around that banks couldn't make enough loans, thus leading to the subprime crisis. Increased amounts of currency create economic bubbles, and bubbles pop.

But has anyone considered a currency bubble? If such exists, then our government reached a bipartisan consensus this week to inflate it some more. Ironically, using these exact same methods of inflation, they have already punished the economy to the brink of recession. No politician can let a recession happen over the fear of being blamed for it, but... You know, if this economic stimulus package backfires, the recession we fall into will be longer, and more desperate. The government is making a huge gamble here. One has to wonder if the alternative -- letting a recession happen now and riding it out -- would be the wisest move.

Nobody's going to discuss that issue though. After all, it's an election year -- who let's issues out then?

[Update] Less stimulus and more blogging issue here: the AMERICAblog post that I referenced in the first sentence of this post has been deleted by Johnny A-List. I guess the 500+ comments against him that post received, as well as the widespread condemnation around the blogosphere he subjected himself to, was just too much for Johnny to handle. So instead of acting like he has some stones and defending his position, or even just letting the original post be and ignoring it, he deleted his own post because it made him look bad. What a coward. I called Johnny out on his hypocritical bullshit in 2006 and I see nothing has changed -- but what else can you expect from a spoiled brat who thinks he's entitled to money. Why the fuck does he still have thousands of readers?

[Update 2] Turns out the post isn't deleted. Somehow, the URL for it was changed and the 500+ previous comments, in a thread very critical of Johnny A-List, were deleted. The post has a new comments thread going where Johnny is actively editing many of the comments that are critical of him.

I'm not sure what makes Johnny more of a wanker: changing the URL of a widely linked post to make it look like it was removed, then removing all the previous comments; or outright deleting the post which is what I first thought he did.

Either way, Johnny's in the wrong here because his actions go far beyond normal administrative tasks bloggers must undergo. Removing a huge comment thread and changing the permalink of one of your widely linked posts -- then actively editing comments in that thread -- are the actions of a gutless weasel.

[h/t: Cernig]