David Stockman, Reagan economist, on debt spree
 

I found this interesting....

Uh, Huh. That's right.

Dave

It seems that the only Republicans who make any sense WRT to the economy are out of government.

"Q: What about Obama?

A: He's got to stop talking about taxing only the top 2 percent. Tax increases are going to have to include the middle class. On this path we're heading toward class warfare."

My only real caveat to this entire article. I believe we have BEEN engaged in class warfare for a very long time. And since about, oh, I'm guessing, the 1980s or so the middle class has been losing.

Dave

Agreed on the Q/A and he would have been part of the original Reaganomics fail as well. I find it so strange seeing good examples of how far right the GOP has gone. Almost as surprising GOPpers haven't taken their party back.
The gun article showing that Berkeley of all places had a multi term Republican state assemblyman back in the late 60's was a shocker too. :eek:



Carl

While it has that objectiveness that comes from the outside man is refreshingly real, I find it strange that Stockman hits on Wall Street twice..

The market has gone nowhere in the past 12 months. It reflects a MUCH healthier evaluation of "real worth" in that the P/E ratios have shaken out to more realistic values. In fact, the entire economy including Wall Street has been held hostage by indecision on tax issues, energy issues, healthcare issues, war resolutions, and general lack of definition in the 1st 2 years of an all Democrat show.. No "reckless speculation" to be found.

And -- this is ill-considered..
After all the class-warfare rhetoric about wall street/banker bonuses, salaries, that was implied as "stealing" from the 401Ks and investments of the "common investor" -- somehow having the FEDS suck off this same teat to the tune of $100B a year or so is just peachy. I might lose a couple bucks a year in fees to the Wall Street maggot crowd, but once the govt gets a hand in the till, I'm sure I'll feel that even more..
"Churning" in the market is NOT non-productive. Although there's a casino aspect to how the market behaves, the volume of trades aids in defining the correct price for every asset. A market that doesn't churn, isn't as predictive. It's in the process of over or under estimating the assets..

Other than that, when you look at the balance between outlays and revenues, there is a natural balance rate of about 18% of GDP all the way from the 50s thru the 90s.

http://nationalpriorities.org/resour...2015-perc-gdp/

That last bit of the graph shows the unmitigated irresponsibility that lost the Dems the House and created the Tea Party. I've kinda decided that I would actually support tax increases if they were done across the board. I do that KNOWING it's gonna kick the shit out of this drifting economy. Kinda like chemotherapy.. You poison the whole system to TRY and defeat the cancer. It will also leave the Dems and MSNBC with virtually NOTHING to offer -- so the whining will stop..

But I'm not ready for that sacrifice if the critters in Congress won't return the remaining stimulus to the Treasury, end our wars abroad, and sell off their "investments" that were made in cars, banks and insurance companies.

Flacaltenn, do you realize how much money is made on Wall Street simply through computer algorithms that can see trades coming down the tape and buy and sell in microseconds to take advantage of the spread? This is nothing more than a leech on top of what is mostly speculative gambling anyway. Taxing this would be a good thing if it increased revenue AND discouraged this parasitic drag on the market.

I'm amazed that Stockman, who I reviled in the Reagan years, is actually making some sense now.

I'm also amazed at the knee-jerk "NO" response that Flacaltenn gives to absolutely every thoughtful proposal that doesn't basically dismantle the government. I agree that government is broken. We need to fix it, not abandon it.

I always say,

"I don't want a government that doesn't regulate. I want a government that regulates responsibly."

I believe that until BOTH parties* get that message, this country will go nowhere.

Dave

(*And the Tea Party)

JonL:

Speculative Gambling heh? Yeah, I'd rather do it the Sandinista way, where the fearless leader gets up in the morning and DECLARES that shrimp ought to be $4.12/pound today.. Now THAT's efficiency in motion.. Later that afternoon all Nicaraguan shrimp boats unload in Honduras where they are paid $6.72/pound.. You're awfully dismissive about the trading and speculation market. Probably because there IS risk involved. And we all know that the goal of big government leftists is to BAN risk in all it's forms..

As for your tech adversions -- it was MUCH better when the appointed gate keepers could SIT on your market order and skim off on latent trades. Their floor yeller got trampled in the stampede and your order got lost. Today, companies get SUED for falling behind in orders by even a couple hours. I always say -- "just give me my Rolodex and file cabinets back and I'll compete with those computer nerds"..

Like I said before, churning is a good thing. If you impose a tax to lower the volume of the market trades, it's like trying to make polling more accurate by lowering your sample size. Try ANOTHER excuse to tax market trades. Maybe that one will stick..

And JonL: Before you try to label me as a NO man.. Did you miss the part where I was considering tax INCREASES?

There you go again, Flacaltenn... Sure, there were problems in the past with the way trades were executed. What does that have to do with identifying and fixing problems that exist today? Today there are algorithms that just sit there and skim profits off of everyone elses trades. They add nothing to pricing stability, production, or anything else of value. I have a close friend who's a NYSE trader. He explained it to me. He's against it BTW. I'll get more info.

Oh, also nice to extrapolate from my statements that I want gov't to ban anything with risk. WTF??? How do you make this crap up? You should really try to channel that creativity in a positive direction.

JonL;

Don't you realize that when the government collects a tax, it's "theft", but when a man in a suit who works outside the government "skims" us, as you put it-----It's perfectly okay, he's just trying to get rich?

(Gee, I wonder who might have the financial where-with-all to advance that kind of thinking might be?:rolleyes:)

Dave

JonL:

I'm an engineer/scientist type. Really worship numbers, and logic and that crap.. When someone complains about computers involved in "algorithmically skimming" because we can now make trades in microseconds, rather than hours -- i look for a model..

You've watched a stock ticker for a couple minutes during trading. Where does it go? It TRENDS higher or lower over minutes, maybe hours, but in the course of a SECOND? It might be +/- $0.02. If you limited trades to a SECOND, rather than MILLIONTH of SECOND, would it make any difference? 100,000 shares "skimming" $0.02 makes a cool $2000. However, if you program in the "trend" and sit around awhile longer, you might be able to "optimize" that transaction to $4000 or so..

So it isn't the SPEED of trading that has potential for "skimming". Just like an ICE engine computer doesn't need to sample the sensors at a microsecond. A millisecond will do just fine. Probably what you're calling skimming are just the algorithms that have been developed to optimize a trade. (I've got NO problem with that) And to some extent, the most measly day trader now has the power on his desktop to do analysis and hook into the market in ways that were unimaginable just 10 years ago. Sure, the big guys put MORE effort into "algorithms". It takes a lot of the human emotion out of analyzing the "sensor inputs". And last time I check, even IBM'S Watson had yet to learn greed...

Just so you know I'm human -- if it's NOT just optimizing trades (which EVERY registered broker has access to), and there is massive theft goin' on -- please let ME know first. Then call the SEC...

flacaltenn, read this article, or google "latency arbitrage." Then get back to me.

Let's assume that this is truly happening and we are all getting "ripped off" by this practice to the tune of $3 billion a year. To put this $3 billion in perspective, the NY Stock Exchange trading volume is around $155 billion per day. And that's not to mention the volume traded on the other stock exchanges world wide.

While the practice of latency arbitrage doesn't leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy, it is in real terms annoyance on par with the drop or two of gas that drips from the nozzle when you're done gassing up your car.

So why would adding, say, $1B to the nation's revenue through taxation of this be a bad thing? That's the context of this. Stockman brought up taxing this kind of high frequency trading, I thought it was a good idea, and our resident "can't do anything" man, Flacaltenn thought it would be a detrimental drag on the market.

In a bigger picture kind of way, doesn't the fact that the major exchanges are in collusion with these thieves raise other concerns? How's that "free market" workin' for ya?

whell:

Right on.. Didya notice that the main thrust here is NOT how to fix the problem, but how to justify TAXING trades. I figure the problem here is mis-diagnosed and not in proper priority of abuse.

JonL:
I'm back to 'splain why taxing transactions does NOTHING to fix this problem (if you want to insist that's it's a horrible monstrously big problem). Dark pools are unregulated. They exist to match buyers/sellers because there is always a split between the asking price and the bid price. THAT gap alone is more than the transaction latentcy of a few milliseconds. So TAXING all the OPEN market orders would do NOTHING NADA to fix the problem.

Furthermore, if I place a BUY order with my broker, and the market price is going DOWN, I hope he's located on another PLANET so that the transmission latency is MINUTES or HOURS... Besides even as a weenie investor, I can place limits on that trade so that it's got to settle EXACTLY at the price I want to get or better. I'm not harmed and you aren't either. In fact, the $15 transaction fee or better is MY highest concern, not withstanding the irritation I'd face by being subject to a meaningless Fed Tax on that transaction.

The article also confuses what the incomes of these latency traders are with how much of that income was a direct of skimming a a couple of pennies per share. The experiment in that article was also a head-scratcher, because in reality, the investigator placed a dummy bid order to affect the mean bid/ask price on the GENERAL MARKET. But the trade went thru EXACTLY as he ordered in the dark pool. He got EXACTLY what he asked for. And rather than just speculate that his ploy of lowering the bid/ask in the general market enabled the scalpers to scalp him by 0.02, an alternate explanation is that the scalpers ignored the General Market price because the CUSTOMER asked for a transaction in the dark pool..

In other words, go ahead and make it illegal for folks to discuss buy/sell offers outside of the official exchanges (good luck with that). But don't use volume or speed of transactions as an excuse to add a tax that won't affect ANY of the practices described here. After all, in that example, it was NOT VOLUME trading that "could have" skimmed a couple cents -- it was ONE well-timed trade. The same one time trade for which you want to punish me and everyone else for..

And anyway, you gonna tax all the BIDS I place to buy Disney at ridiculously low prices? Or just the one order that actually connects with a seller and results in a sale? Don't tell me it's the former because that would SERIOUSLY handicap the ability to actually connect willing buyers with willing sellers...

I just bought tickets for a Sugarland concert thru an "authorized broker" that the venue linked to. The tickets were marked up 120% over the arena price. Why don't we fix that first? Why is it illegal for some dude to stand outside and ask 50% over, when the venue is directing folks to brokers who mark them for %120? TAX THAT!!!

OMG. Flacaltenn, you cannot admit that anything is ever wrong unless the government is behind it.

Latency arbitrage is nothing but collusion between the exchanges and a handful of well-placed hedge funds with the goal of simply skimming money out of the system. It is itself like a tax, but a private tax. I guess that's why you see nothing wrong with it. It does nothing to add transparency or stability to the markets. And there's no risk associated with the practice.

Yet instead of being able to actually agree - at all - with someone you have labeled a "leftist," you once again use this tired old bait-and-switch tactic... change the subject to ticket scalping??? WTF?

You said: "Just so you know I'm human -- if it's NOT just optimizing trades (which EVERY registered broker has access to), and there is massive theft goin' on -- please let ME know first. Then call the SEC..." I let you know, but since it came from a "lefty," I guess the ticket scalping is a bigger issue.

Oh, I guess $3 billion isn't "massive" enough theft when it's going to people who are likely to be republicans. But heaven forbid a regular worker should be able to negotiate a living wage or get affordable health care. I can only imagine the hew and cry that would ensue if $3B were "stolen" from the federal budget by a group unpopular with the right. Oh yeah... how much time and money and bile was spewed over ACORN? You know how much federal money they received? $1.7 Million in 2008 and $2.2 million in 2009. Even if there were many improprieties in their use of the funds (and I'm not saying there were or weren't), they "wasted" less than 1/1000 of the money being stolen from investors through latency arbitrage.

The taxation proposal came from Stockman who's looking under every rock to find palatable sources of revenue the country desperately needs, even if there are also massive cuts in spending.

He's not looking to fix every problem. He's looking to raise revenue.

But I guess to you guys it's more important to go after workers, the poor, the elderly, rather than explore taxing a class of transactions that do nothing but enrich those who buy a seat at the table while taking on exactly zero risk.

Question is JonL, are YOU "looking to fix the problem" or just trying "to raise revenue?

Because the article you quoted makes NO indication that the VOLUME of speedy trading had anything to do with the "skimming".. Actually in fact, it didnt' convince that speedy was the key asset that made the scheme work either..

And I asked you whether you wanted to tax each BID placed or each transaction settled and all I got was a tirade of how I was ignoring the problem.

If you want to fix the problem, I'll entertain any suggestions you have.. But I'll be damned if you want to create AN excuse that makes it OK to arbitrarily tax something that will have no effect on the problem.. Just rationality, not indifference.

Read the article again. Or at least read it for the first time. Speed is the ENTIRE reason that scheme works. It is the reason why the computers doing the trades need to be located close to the exchanges. It's right there in the name... LATENCY. It means the algorithm has a few microseconds to know what trades are coming, evaluate how they are going to affect pricing, and get in ahead of the trade to make a few pennies.

Personally, I'd like to see this kind of trading - latency arbitrage - be illegal. It was Stockton who raised the issue of taxing it, and I'd say that's fine. I don't know by what method. This has nothing to do with taxing every trade conducted in the normal fashion by normal investors or day traders or even program trades that look at longer term (minutes or hours) market trends.

JonL:

The example in the article is so crappilly worded that you can't discern HOW the speed advantage is important in that case.
But here are the facts about the example given.

1) Has very little to do with speed. To wit...
If the Public Exchange and the dark pool are in sync or the market is relatively static, no advantage exists. Also no advantage if you're selling and price is going down or vice versa. A few milliseconds jump on that difference MIGHT have netted them anywhere from 0 to a couple pennies a share. They could also spend an hour staring at the screen waiting for the $100 (excess) profit from that trade to materialize. None of this works unless you exploit timing differences between dark pools and the NASDAQ or NYSE.

2) The example has NOTHING to do with churning due to pumping up artificial volume like Stockman and you alledged. It's a single consumated trade.

3) The outcome of the transaction was EXACTLY what the customer ordered.

4) It is entirely SPECULATION that the "guilty ones" bought shares at 0.02 less on the public exchange because the experimentor succeeded in lowering the bid/ask margin on that exchange.

5) In reality, any perpetrator who followed the steps in the experiment would be buying back their own shares for $7.47 since he was the one to place the sell at the lowered price. Makes no sense. Except that the experimenter wanted to get the 2 exchanges "out of sync" temporarily.. Like I said, knock yourself out and ban "dark pools" or even having a conversation between traders about bid/ask pricing. (won't work).

Any way -- If i make a contract to sell you something at terms and price, and my "profit" ends up to be $0.02 more per item than I calculated because I had the stuff in stock this time and didn't FedEx it like usual -- did I steal?

JonL: THere MAYBE some sinister inequality going on here to do with speedy connections or even brilliant trade optimizing software. I've looked at 5 or 6 other articles on the topic and

1) This is not capitalism at it's finest. These guys are working a scheme that produces a profit but no real product or service for the public. But as far as I'm concerned, if their clients get what they asked for and the bookies walk away with a $0.02 a share because they invested in a Lotus system instead of a Kia system, that's their choice.

2) You could fix the whole issue by putting delays of a few milliseconds on the raw data feeds from the Public Exchanges. The regulators do not currently believe the problem warrants such a move. All of that fancy server/software/comm line hardware would then be worth ZILCH.

3) I'm much more concerned about the stability and reliability of the automated trading S/W packages that could trigger market abberations than I am about playing the spread between market prices of a few milliseconds. You STILL have to enter the trade and wait for your speed advantage to produce results. It's not a guaranteed money stream.

4) The fact that these same "bookies" are usually high frequency traders is actually a benefit for the market. They may be working the micro-moves of a market when everyone else is looking on a daily basis. This churning is beneficial in making more matches between bid/ask prices and keeping the market producing actual made transactions.

Back to Stockman and his proposal.. So he wants --

Why can't you just be as glib as he was. It's there for the taking. We skim it because we can. No need to villify or try to justify it. It won't stop the practice you're presenting here. Not at all. A $100B windfall for the govt to have no effect on a $3B problem? Now THAT doesn't make sense.

Reminds me of a favorite bumper sticker.
Don't Steal! -- the government hates competition.

The more you guys go on about this shit, the more confused I get. Good God what a confusing f**kin' mess.

Do these people actually PRODUCE anything, or are they just parasites looking for a fat vein to suck on?

Dave

Lets look at this another way. First, I will confess that I know little to nothing about stock market transactions. But it appears to be the consensus here that these transactions to not add any real value to the economy. The government needs to find sources of revenue as well as sources for budget cuts to deal with the deficit. One concern people have stated about raising taxes is that it can be a drain on the economy. However, because these transactions have little value as it is, raising tax revenue from this particular source is not going to harm the economy. Why does that not make it a practical way to raise much needed revenue?

Regards,

D-Ray

Thank you. That very well sums up my feelings on the matter.

The latter.:rolleyes:

MerryLander: Welcome Back man..

Look Guys:

Just say you don't understand it and just insist on taxing it. That's what Stockman did. I already told you that churning up volume is a healthy thing for the market. Even dung beetles have a vital ecological role. And I agree with MerrryLander, it's a vein to suck on, so be good little leftist and suck away..

But don't lose sleep over a few millisecond advantage that some traders MAY have bought on market tickers. The regulators realize what I'm about to tell you, that's why they haven't slapped delays on the raw data feeds from the exchanges..

The E-Trade baby could pull this same strategy from his crib. (now hear me out, this isn't just hyperbole). This "skimming" only works when the market for a stock has a TREND. It's either going up or down. It will remain on that trend for MINUTES, perhaps HOURS during a typical day. If the baby places a buy order in an up trend, he wants it executed fast to make the most margin on the deal. But if the baby HOLDS that position for an HOUR or a DAY, he can see maybe $0.50 or a $1.10 in profit for that trade (because he's a vicious day-trader and a baby, he doesn't thiink about holding a trade for longer than that). So E-trade gets that order placed in seconds (not milliseconds) and the baby is completely happy with his $0.50 play.

Meanwhile, the big, nasty, rich and brutal skimmers get in on the trade 5 milliseconds sooner. THEY get an extra 0.03 on the trade. But they aren't even in it for the day. They just want to take that 0.03 and split. They have $21 million invested to get that efficiency. The baby has a Blackberry. What is their REAL advantage over the baby?

The baby wiped and powdered their butts with his trade profit. Even if the skimmers had the attention span of a baby and HELD their quicky trade for the SAME DURATION as the baby -- they would have netted maybe .05% more on the trade. Now the skimmers can play this game on days when the baby can't. Where the trends are much weaker and their speed still allows some advantage. But their profits go down to 1/10 or 1/100 of what it was for the baby trade.

A totally valid view of the situation here is that they have a more efficient trading platform that gives them a .05% margin advantage. So obviously, the big govt appropriate solution would be to subsidize all those POORER traders by buying them new servers and shit.. (SARCASM)

THIS is why the regulators are not interested in "fixing" this..

Taxing ALL trades on the market? With no benefit? And this is not meaningless regulation? Knock yourselves out. I'd rather tax your tweets.. Why not? Same deal... It's useless IMHO...

The latency arbitrage traders are the ones sucking on the big fat vein. I think you still don't understand what this is all about. What it is about is having inside knowledge of what orders have actually been placed but are still in the electronic pipeline, and using that knowledge to actually get in front of those trades to buy for a few pennies less and immediately resell to the order that's still traveling down the pipeline. It's nothing but a parasitic drag. It used to be called "front running" when it was done by brokerages on a human time scale.

There is no market trend that matters. Latency arbitrage works on trades that are already in the process of occurring. It's as if you can stop time after a "regular" trader places an order, go out and buy the stock for a few pennies less than the trader's order, restart time, and fill that order. There is no efficiency being added. There is no price stability being created. There is no possibility for a "regular" e-trader to do the same thing because it is impossible for anyone to have access to this information unless they can tap into the data feed extremely close to the source. That is why the exchange is setting up an entire facility for latency arbitrage traders where everyone in the facility gets the same length cable going to the feed. The exchange is basically saying "if you want to suck off this vein, we'll create a level playing field with a very limited number of positions for you, just pay us a huge fee for one of these limited positions, and you can all go suck the vein to your heart's content."

Why don't the regulators want to fix this??? C'mon! Has the SEC been particularly effective at regulating and enforcing anything? The people who are engaging in this are powerful players on Wall Street. They unfortunately exist above the law because they have tremendous influence on how the regulations are written. Flacaltenn, haven't you made the case that regulations are corrupted because they are too influenced by the lobbying of those being regulated? That there is too much influence by the various industries is something on which we can agree.

JonL: A couple issues with what you said. I'll also agree to some of it latter. But I'm short on time so let's finish understanding the problem first..

False.. Blatantly false.. You can only "go back in time" and buy cheaper if the stock is strongly trendly up.. Does depend on much slower metrics in the dynamic pricing..

You are correct that this ALWAYS happened, in "human time" as you put it or in "baby time" as I described. NOW -- we're not arguing about skimming DOLLARS off a trade -- but pennies.. I'd say -- That's progress... WOuldn't you?

No. It is not going back in time. It is having so much of a speed advantage (that "latency" thing) that these systems can see the trade microseconds after the order's been placed, get ahead of it in the queue for a few cents less, and then use those shares to fill the order that should have gone through unmolested. It has NOTHING to do with trends, much less strong trends.

It has always happened and it has always - before - been illegal. It was not that common because it was easy to get caught. Now it is legitimized and because of the sheer number of trades it very possibly represents a much higher dollar value, though I am only guessing about that.

Calling one high-volume, low-margin predatory practice "progress" compared to a low-volume, high-margin predatory practice is kinda weird, I think.

Hey: I'm only here to make better lefties out of all you taxed crazed fiends.:)

So it occurred to me that maybe you've not considered the obvious.. ALL of those parasites are ALREADY paying (or should be paying) short term gains taxes of up to 35% on ALL of those quick trades. As opposed to me and the E-Trade baby who may be smart enough to only pay 15% long term cap gains on our profit. So the Fed is ALREADY recieving a bonus on that activity!

It would be completely mindless and irresponsible to set up an entirely NEW invented tax to suck off this vein. New forms, new bureaucracies, new accounting, ect, ect. RESPONSIBLE Lefties should appreciate the 35% of each of those $0.02 gains that is occurring. Roughly $1B in revenue already from the estimated $3B suck-off y'all are bitching about. Lord it's almost impossible to run a scam these days without having the Feds sucking off of you!:rolleyes:

So all you need to do is to create a special short term cap definition that captures more of this booty. PLEASE - don't invent a new tax that punishes me and baby!:D

BTW: the fact that all those day-traders, and HFT speed demons are pumping income to the FEDs thru taxes may be the OPERATIVE reason that the SEC doesn't feel compelled to stop it. Could it be?? Yup..

Now with all the important crap goin on , like being under cyberattack by Unidentified Flying Weiners, I've got to get back to work..

Unfortunately JonL: Still very wrong. You can ONLY peer into the future (by a mere few milliseconds) and buy for less fast -- IF the market metric is trending up to a higher price.. NOBODY gets to halt and restart time on the system.. Market dynamics are a fundamental element of this strategy..

Good Lord:(.

What ever happened to; "I think that company has an excellent idea for their new product. I think I'll invest in some of their stock." That way, they company draws investment capital, the investor make his money and the public gets a great new product. Maybe some jobs are created along the way. Wonderful, isn't it??

Some of us seem to think private parasites are somehow less reprehensible than governmental parasites..................................

I don't see any difference.

A useless pig is a useless pig, no matter how pretty the dress it wears.

Dave

"We've had a tremendous reverse Robin Hood redistribution of income to the top."

and you folks on the right still don't understand this.

how can I not question your...

I'd be a damn fool to try and disagree with any of that.. 2 pts to the Lord of the Sea! I think maybe it's because of Business degrees that stress business for the sake of business instead of innovation, science and engineering. Folks seem to think you can mix and match corporate execs from Disney and Intel.

I'm all for beneficial capitalism that rewards products, services. But that involves risk and actual sweat..

God forbid that any of those Harvard MBAs had to work up a sweat.:rolleyes:

It's St. Ronnies "Trickle Down" economics. I think of it as "Birdfeeder Economics", wherein you keep the birdfeeder full, making sure the pretty birdies have all of the seed they can fit in their fat little bellies. Later, they show their gratitude by crapping all over your car, then sit outside your window and squawk for more. "Tax cut, tax cut, squawk! Polly want a tax cut! SQUUUUUAAAAWWWWWKKKK!!! Bust the union, bust the union, SQUUUUAAAAAWWWWWKKKK!!!!!!"

Dave

Hard work and sweat is for the "little people".

Dave

The VOLUME of the bird feeder is not fixed, it's variable. You expand CONSUMPTION from the bottom. You expand jobs and manufacturing/service base from the top..

Therefore, either trickle kinda works. Except that down is always easier than trickling up..

Go now and try to trickle up...

There is a remedy if you feel you're not paying enough taxes. Amazingly, the IRS takes donations :p

Pete

Here's an interesting graphic on the sources of our debt:

Yellow = Tax Cuts
Blue = Stimulus
Green = Wars

And the GOP's answer to our debt problem? More tax cuts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...tchart-all.jpg
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...e-red/?hpid=z1

Interesting but without Bush's wars and tax cuts we would not have needed a stimulus, no? Doesn't look like the stimulus amounts to a hill of beans compared to the two other fiasco's, I guess the deregulating fits in there too somewhere on the needing of the stimulus.

Carl