Bernanke reminds of an auto salesman, ie. You’ve got to do this deal now. RIGHT NOW. In the next 10 minutes! No time to waste! Hurry. Hurry. You have to do this deal NOW. No more thinking. No more consideration. NOW. GWB and Congress fell for it. The nation is paying for it.

We hugely disagree on top down vs. bottom up recovery. No sense in my beating that horse.

I do mention this: Corporate headquarters fleeing is not a reason to keep corporate taxes high. Corp headquarters flee partially BECAUSE OF high corporate taxes. The same dynamic occurs with individual high performers in all fields: let income taxes get too high – at the state level or the national level – and some will consider fleeing and taking their talent with them: a slow bleeding of talent and production away from a state or a nation.

You and I could not agree more about the degree of oversight Congress should be exercising on companies that took bailout money. Let’s not forget who structured and drove through those bailouts that have been so woefully misapplied and mismanaged — Do the names George W. Bush and Hank Paulson ring a bell?

The Right believes private expenditures are the most efficient; that economic growth vastly comes from the private sector instead of the public sector. The Left absolutely, diametrically disagrees.

This is the most simplistic of statements and, as such, pretty much wrong. Private sector spending would be lovely, and I (as would other progressives) heartily approve of it. In fact, that’s much of what’s in the stimulus bill. Money put into the hands of people who are “on the edge” — unemployed, uninsured, barely getting by — would be spent almost immediately and have stimulative effects for core industries. It would also be a mitzvah and a quite christian thing to do.

Money put into the hands of people who are relatively better off — which is what the R-proposed income tax rate cuts would do — has very little stimulative effect. It is largely used to either pay off bills or is put into savings. Nobody is buying anything (when’s the last time you made a major purchase?), credit is tight or nonexistent, and the outlook is so poor that people (and companies) aren’t making long-term or capital investments.

I can’t say it any more plainly: Trickle down doesn’t work. I know this tidbit of wisdom emanated from St. Ronnie and therefore is held sacrosanct by those of the conservative persuasion, but facts are facts.

Corporate tax cuts sound good as well, on the surface. But many corporations don’t pay any taxes at all, having located their headquarters offshore (see Halliburton, e.g.). Smaller companies, which don’t have the wherewithal to set up shop in Aruba or wherever, are the much-vaunted engine of job growth. But you don’t pay taxes no matter what the tax rate is if you have no profits. Further, there is absolutely no reason to think that companies who get to pay lower taxes will create jobs. The last time I went to business school, it seemed a truism that companies create jobs when they have need for the labor (which is usually because sales justify increasing production capacity), not when they have the money to do so. Companies that find themselves with an unexpected surplus of money usually direct it toward their investors (in the form of dividends), their executives (in the form of bonuses), or use it to buy up other companies.

When corporations take public bailouts, those corporations are instantly in partnership with taxpayers, and therefore such expenditures are obscene and unvirtuous (not that they were ever virtuous in the first place). When corporations go into bailout partnership with taxpayers, Congress should get themselves into the middle of those corporations’ business. Before dispensing funds, Congress should throw weight around and demand austerity, accountability, and methods of ensuring same. It’s shameful Congress hasn’t demanded such power in return for handing over taxpayer monies. An investment banker would demand such power before making a major investment in a company. Congress is effectively making taxpayers into investment bankers who are forced to lend to failing companies without receiving corresponding and customary stake in how those failing companies are run. It’s shameful Barack is in the position of criticizing CEO pay bonuses, then immediately seeing the government hand over $Billions to those very CEOs.

Separately, re “what stimulates the economy”

Every expenditure ripples through the economy. The debate is always about which expenditures stimulate and grow the economy most efficiently. The Right believes private expenditures are the most efficient; that economic growth vastly comes from the private sector instead of the public sector. The Left absolutely, diametrically disagrees.

But, we can agree a partial taxpayer funding of a $1.2M office is obscene. We are the World! Sweet! Let us walk hand in hand…