Depression.org ... by gimleteye

If you want to know why the stock market is plunging, it is because the world is caught between President Obama's assurance that the trillion dollar stimulus-- the first of several initatives-- is the beginning of the end of our economic troubles and the worry, expressed by numerous observers, that it could also be the beginning of the unravelling of the world economy: a Depression.

This is not a matter interpreting whether the stimulus glass is half-empty, or, half-full.

To give the public confidence that we are not pouring money down that black hole (and to help buoy stock markets around the world), the list of stimulus targets must be strongly balanced to reflect that public money will be spent to fundamentally rework our economy to make products that people need, recreating long-term and sustainable jobs based on a new energy model. If it is all repaving and road and bridge contracts, we are headed to a Depression. (hit read more.)

I am not reassured by the project list assembled from the US Conference of Mayors Report (whose chair is Miami Mayor Manny Diaz). For Miami-Dade, the list totals $7 billion: the number I've used to summarize the infrastructure "deficit" that has been held closely guarded as a state secret by the county manager for years.

There is a new website called stimuluswatch.org that appears to be an honest effort by independent researchers to inform the public: this is the list of "shovel ready" projects that could be funded through the stimulus bill just signed into law by President Obama. I've taken a quick look. It's a bonanza windfall for cement manufacturers and road pavers, as I suspected it would be and cautioned against. It is for workers with shovels and heavy construction equipment.

Take a look for yourselves.

Let me put this as succinctly as possible: these projects, nearly all of them with the exception of the water treatment facilities, may be "shovel-ready" but they really represent icing on a cake that doesn't exist. The "cake" itself is where the stimulus money should be directed: build new jobs and economic drivers. What the list reflects is the absence of both imagination and a sense of urgency tied to the current reality: we are on the cusp of a Depression.

Carl Hiassen put it simply, in The Miami Herald: "Developers have controlled state and county governments for so long that no Plan B exists." Hiassen is right. If you look closely at the list, it clearly shows there is no Plan B.

"Lost and clueless, lawmakers desperately hack away at public budgets while clinging to the hope that boom times will return."

The list of projects on Stimuluswatch.org basically lay out the red carpet for the return of the boom times, without adding a single cent or inkling where the boom times will come from.

Repaving roads and bridges and so forth may be a quick stimulus to improve infrastructure, but these economic activities do not get at making things that people need. These products most certainly will not come from thin air, or, from the inflation of developers' expectation that a new market for suburbs or platted subdivisions in farmland will suddenly materialize. It ain't gonna happen.

It's over. Throwing money at road paving contracts is maybe what you do after a Depression and you have to thin the soup and bread kitchen lines. We're not there yet, but if the list from Miami-Dade is any indication and if this is where the stimulus money goes: we are headed in that direction.