Seen over at LegIrons a very neat explanation of how the fiscal stimulus works. I quote in it’s entirety:
“It is a slow day in the small Minnesota town of Marshall, and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.
A rich tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the motel, lays a $100 bill on the desk and says he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs before selecting one for the night.
1. As soon as he walks upstairs, the motel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.
2. The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.
3. The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Farmer’s Co-op.
4. The guy at the Farmer’s Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her “services” on credit.
5. The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.
6. The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.
At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves town.
No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looks to the future with a lot more optimism.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Stimulus works. ”
Of course the libertarian observation would I suspect be – that they could have achieved exactly the same thing locally amongst themselves without any need for external intervention if they’d been so inclined. But then I’ve always wondered in my now doubt incredibly naïve way -how much debt there really is out there and who actually owes who what if all the inter-lending was tallied up and cancelled out. Obviously this would no doubt cause the end of civilisation as we know it, and isn’t how global finance work etc… but I’d still be really interested to know what the real levels of debt are.
It would seem that over at Labour Lost they thing that people don’t actually really rather despise the current Labour party and that they’re not as unpopular as the Tories used to be. The Appalling Strangeness disputes this idea, so if you dislike the current Labour lot as much as the Tories of yesteryear go on over and say “Hi” – and add you name to those that do actually “hate and revile” labour.
In the meantime have a cartoon (Thanks to Ara).
(In other news work is excessively busy – so I’m being even quieter than usual. Just in case you’re wondering.)
It’s a Saturday morning so just for a change, something utterly unrelated to anything. A Rolf Harris cover of “I touch myself”, it’s deeply deeply wrong but rather amusing.
Your normal scheduled viewing will be resumed shortly.
Now normally I really can’t draw, tonight I’m just back from the pub and my graphics tablet isn’t working so I had to use the trackball. Trackballs it seems are even worse for drawing than mice. However this is as good as it’ll get so for the First Annual Everybody Draw Mohammad Day – here’s something….
Gordon has left the building, but sadly not the land. Dave and Nick are setting up shop and divvying the spoils between them – give it a few days for the dust to settle and then we’ll see if it’s business as usual with the government having got back in.
Ok, this is silly and childish, but equally maybe amusing.
A friend* of mine reports that Mooncup are having a poll as to what women call their vagina’s, but it won’t let anyone say that they call their vagina a cunt. Which afore mentioned friend rather objects to, reading that reminded me of a campaign of Old Holborn had a while back and to which I still link, that many people should call Jackboot Jacqui a cunt.
Hopefully by now you can see where this is going and may be amused by the idea. So in the long tradition of breaking stupid internet marketing polls do get over to the Mooncup web site and tell them that you “lovingly call yours” – Jacqui
N.B. Normally it’s quite important to make sure we all use the same spelling and capitilization – as was discovered in the People magazine vote for “Hank the ugly drunken dwarf”
So the Summer of rage[tm] is drawing to a close without all that much rage being in evidence. Anger, disgust and even outrage but none of the rage we were promised. so I’d just like to get in before the usual suspects do and suggest that we are about to move into: The Autumn of anarchy
This may or may not be followed by a re-run of a winter of discontent, which I hope will be followed by the The Spring of sedition
