Take a look at dIsney for example. Disney, even during the slowest times of the year, never has a hotel occupanc level of less than 85%, the past 2 years, 85% has been their high levels of occupancy.. This means that some of their 53 thousand employees are losing their jobs. If just 1% lose their jobs that more than 530 additional people out of work.

Drive down any major road in just about any city and look at the high levels of empty businesses, who is bailing them out? Not the Federal Government.

Look at it this way, Geico spends Millions and millions of dollars every year on some very lame adertisement. these dollars come from the policy holders monthly premiums. If they stopped advertising all together, how many actors, producers, editors, other film crew, members of their marketing division and hundreds of others would be jobless? Now, if they did it so they could cut the premiums for the policy holders to help the policy holders through the rough time, although it would be a nice gesture, it would be poor business practices. But if they HAD to cut all ad productions due to the sudden loss of revenue because 25% of their policy holders had their cars repo’ed, that would be a tragedy.

This is exactly what is happening, due to the greedy American public and a major economic downswing, millions are losing their jobs becaues the american public just can no longer afford the things they used to. Restaurants are closing in massive numbers, bars are dropping like flies, hotels are shutting down, auto makers are failing, the construction industry (which drives the economy in a major way) has all but died, heck, even record producing companies are floundering.

as for what the extra money has done for me? That is the exact type of mentality that causes this country to fail, it is We the people, not ME THE PEOPLE.

Kudo’s to President Obama for trying to do a quick fix, however history has proven that trickle down economics don’t work. It never has, it never will. Why? Because while some things may roll down hill, the money given to these massive corporations will not. Yes, it helps to bail them out short term, but it is the lowly John and Jane Doe’s who buy groceries, cars, electronics, dinners and a myriad of other things that keep these corporations running.

If my car gets repossessed then why do I need to pay for insurance? Now, I have a repo on my credit so who is going to give me another chance, especially with the times being what they are?

If my house gets foreclosed, I will no longer need homeowners insurance, wont need to pay those property taxes and then what? Rent? Great, I get to reduce my electric bill, get very cheap renters insurance, and most likely put my 2 large dogs to sleep because most apartments wont let you have a dog that weighs more than 10 pounds.

And then there is the nice credit score that comes with these two things and the rest of the outstanding debts, but hey, we at least bailed out those large companies for a couple of months.

Lets be realistic here, you can throw a bandage on a severed artery, but unless you fix the artery, you are still going to bleed out and DIE! Coining part of a phrase from the great Jack Nicholson, This Country Needs An Enema!!!

We must print and print a lot. Regardless of the inflation or deflation of that little piece of linen paper, my cable company is still going to want 140 of them at the end of the month. Until we do a true bailout of the American people, we are going to stay in this downward spiral.

Now I know you mentioned that this situation only affects about 10% of the people at whole, but you SIR are soooooo wrong. This country now has in excess of a 10% unemployment rate, but this does not include any of those who are unable to file for unemployment, like the independent contractors, the mom and pops who just lost their businesses, the self employed and so on. This 10% is easily in excess of 20% and climbing rapidly. With GM and Chrysler closing dealerships in record numbers, Hummer and several others being sold off to overseas companies, thousands of more people are going to be cramming the unemployment lines like crazy. This is an epidemic.

What must happen is the government set up an true bailout program that first gets with the mortgage lenders and banks and says, we are going to help those who are behind in their car payments and house payments as of this date, we will catch them up to current status. In return, you WILL refinance them at this interest rate and give them 6 months before their first payment is due. Granted, these lenders will be taking somewhat of a hit by doing this, but it will be a much smaller hit overall than what is happening to them right now.

The government just saved hundreds of thousands of people a lot of pain and gave them a chance to begin to see light again.

Second, instead of bailing out the auto makers, fund billions THROUGH the American peoples pockets with buying them new American made cars at substantially large discounts of course.

Then turn around and dump billions more in stimulus money in these same Americans bank accounts. 10,000 for non married individuals and 25-30,000 for married and married with family.

Now, add the zeros to the federal reserves bank account and pay off our debts owed to other countries, have the fed reduce the interest rate to ½ of a percent, mandate very tight restrictions on new credit and initiate a 20 cents per gallon federal tax that goes straight into the reserve to compensate for what it paid out to the other countires.

A year or two down the road, start pulling this money back out of America and destroy it, but save the country now, before it is completely devastated.

Of course, we need to really revamp our government spending and ours as well, but we are in a pickle. It needs fixed and it needs fixed now. This will give the American people light at the end of the tunnel, it will create new jobs, it will stimulate the global economy and mend that artery, at least temporarily.

Oh, and by American, I mean those who are actually Americans, naturalized or not, we do not need to bail out those who are here illegally.

Did you know that many counties are considering taking the foreclosed homes in their counties and turning them into low income housing? Umm, if we weren’t in a sudden state of low income, many of these houses would not be in foreclosure.

I have no real issues with Krugman’s article. It, like other articles including mine, are speculative. He is correct in saying that, thus far, we seem to be ok (other than creating a significant debt for our children that will be difficult to repay).

Part of it has to do with “what” the government spends money on. Purchasing debt (that has a chance to be repaid) has a good chance of a “positive” return. Handing out money to fund projects with no significant benefit (welfare projects) do not. Thus far we have been heavier on the side of debt.

On the other hand his comments on what happened in France is to the point and certainly a road we do not want to go down with debt increasing from our current war.

Secondly his comment about it not being an issue in Japan is also correct. But keep in mind how well Japan restructured its output (to the world) to help keep money coming into the country with exports.

What will the US sell to the world? Therein lies part of my question. We are great weapons of mass consumption – can we shift our education and output to supply the world?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/opinion/29krugman.html?em