Can we please stop with these ridiculous stimulus plans?

After Congress had kissed (there is another word I should use here) away $150 billion on stimulus checks, $700 billion on Wall St., $115 billion and counting on AIG, and passed an impotent Housing and Economic Recovery Bill in July - now they are talking about yet ANOTHER stimuls plan?

They simply don't get it.

You don't write people a check for fogging up a mirror, having a faint pulse, or being in a certain tax bracket - whatever tax bracket that is.  You give Americans a tax incentive to do what you want them to do in order to stimulate the economy and housing market.  In this case, it would be an incentive to invest in real estate so that we can get the excess supply of homes off the market and bring price stability to the housing sector. 

The $700 billion bailout is a great example, you give banks money with no pre-conditions for them to do anything specific with it.

Why are we going to write more checks to the American people, with money that the government doesn't have, and simply "hope" that they will do something positive and constructive with it that will stimulate the economy?  Didn't we already try this in May?  It didn't work then, and it won't work now. 

The IRS is the perfect example of how a stimulus plan should work (did I just say that?).  The IRS allows business owners and real estate investors to depreciate the investments that they have made.  They want Americans to make these investments, otherwise they wouldn't give them a tax incentive to do so.

Why, during a recession, does common sense tax and fiscal strategies get thrown out the window? 

Pretty simple stuff; if the government wants you to do something, they will give you a tax incentive.  If they don't want you to do something, they will tax you.  But show me where giving somebody money for no reason has resulted in economic growth?  The American people don't want handouts, they want to own a home and have a job that they can support their family with.  They don't want sympathy or welfare.

To me, what we want is for Americans to invest in America, invest in our housing market.  This will help every American that owns a home because it will stop price declines.  This is turn will help out Fannie and Freddie (now owned by the government) and every bank and investment bank on Wall St. that owns mortgage backed securities.

How is a $1,000 stimulus check really going to help somebody when their $30,000 of home equity has evaporated?

How is this money going to help them refinance or sell their home if they can no longer afford their home?

How is it going to help them find a job?

If the government can actually jump start the stalled housing market, they will fix the economy.

Any actions that the government takes short of this is throwing good money after bad.  See; AIG and Stimulus Plan I.

www.ItsTheHousingMarketStupid.com