What Did You Say? Cut Spending? OK, Only a Fraction Though

Ding, Dong, Ding, Dong, sound the bells! Play the victory song Obama is listening! Well, maybe, but certainly not sufficiently. This morning Obama heeded the cries of hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country who demanded an end to the Obama spending spree by telling his cabinet members to cut the budget $100 million dollars.

Wow, $100 million!

Lets look at $100 million dollars. The picture to the right is of $100 million dollars. This seems like a lot of money. If I found that in my basement I'd be pretty happy. Most of us wouldn't be able to spend it in a lifetime...well maybe I could but not without a lot of work. I may have to find an island to buy, several yachts, and a few exotic sports cars. I'd have enough to throw a few million to my closest friends; you're welcome. This is what Obama decided to cut from the current budget.

Now lets look at a trillion dollars. A trillion is a little more than a hundred million. This is the amount Obama spent with one signature to get the banks lending again. The second picture to the right is of a trillion dollars. You may have to click on it for the full effect but the same man featured above drooling over his pallet of cash is dwarfed next to the warehouse of money represented here. This is 1/12 of what Obama has promised groups, organizations and industries of yours, mine and our children's future.

Again I'll mention the Congressional Budget Office's estimation that in 2019 we'll be putting forth 80 some percent of GDP to pay our national debt. And all Obama can do is cut 100 million!? If we need national defense to protect our precious resources Obama wants to give away to the Iranians, Cubans and Venezuelans we wont be able to put 80+ percent toward debt. We currently spend about 6% on education, about 5% on defense, and about 7% on health care. That's almost the remaining 20%. So what about infrastructure, interest, transportation, emergency relief, humanitarian aid, paying government employees, our World Bank, IMF, U.N. promises or anything else? Well I guess in the years coming they'll just have to wait.

Let's look at the actual numbers. One hundred million: 100,000,000, okay; one trillion: 1,000,000,000,000, yikes! 10,000, one hundred millions, equals one trillion. So ten thousand countries with one hundred million people, equals 1 trillion. Maybe a better perspective: there are apparently 3,873,000,000 bricks in the great wall of China, at that rate there would have to be 258 great wall's to reach 1 trillion bricks. The state of Indiana is about 1 trillion square feet. The new Colts stadium is 1.8 million square feet, which means you could put almost 56 into the 100 million square feet, then 10,000 of those into the whole state of Indiana. In all you could have 56,000 new Colts stadiums; wow would Payton Manning have a field day. Where would we put them? Anyway, you get the idea.

Needless to say 100 million is a pathetic number when looking at the total. And I only used 1 trillion as my reference, imagine if it were the 12.8 that Bloomberg estimates.

I would have to concede a little credit though if I felt the policies of spending us out of a recession at the expense of future generations were working, but really they aren't. Lets look at the banking industry. We'll use a conservative number and say of the 12.8 trillion promised thus far, only four trillion goes directly to the Banks. And given 2008's GDP was 14.2 trillion dollars, that's a tremendous influx of capital; almost 1/3 more. From that huge investment, we would assume capital is beginning to flow like wine, right. Wrong!

This morning's Wall Street Journal says that of the 21 banks receiving TARP money, 19 show a 23% decrease in new loans from October when the program began. In addition, of those 21 banks receiving money, there was a 4.7% decline in new loans between January and February.

I'd also concede credit if another benchmark to measure success were showing signs of improvement. Currently the jobless claims are almost as high as they have been since the Carter administration. If we look at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, they show 2/3 of all losses have been in the last 5 months, during the heaviest of spending. In March the Department of Labor reported a loss of 633,000 jobs and analysts say that the stimulus package will "only slow the pace of job losses."

Spending $12.8 trillion dollars doesn't seem like a viable solution. Neither does Obama's decision to trim a measly $100 million off the budget. It may be something, and critics will argue to give credit for that, but more can be done. What Obama needs to do is reevaluate his policies to conserve capital. He needs to spend it as if there weren't an unlimited supply. Obama needs also to welcome the payback of funds by corporations such as JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, TCF and others with no stipulations or restrictions; currently this isn't happening.

Obama, watch your step or you're going to be replace in a, short for you, long for us, four years. Certainly there will be an end to your attempted socialism in 2010.