I certainly didn’t say Obama invested your money in a Ponzi scheme. If you’re talking about the bank bailout, that was the last child of the previous administration, remember?

Now, about the stimulus package, I don’t know where you live, but there are some states that didn’t get a cent, courtesy of their Governors. As for the rest, it is divided in a certain way – a big percentage of it (around a third) is going to tax cuts to the middle class – if you make less than 250/year, you’ll feel it or you’re feeling it already. There’s a certain part that goes to infrastructure, another part to education, another to research, etc. Again, it doesn’t take a click to take these things off the ground. If you yourself have a project that falls into one of these categories, maybe you should inquire with your Governor and submit it, the distribution of the stimulus is affected to each state.

And, I never said that Americans don’t work enough. What I said was that Americans are used to quick fixes and there aren’t quick fixes to unemployment. There isn’t a pill, there isn’t a click. It’s a long path uphill. I know, it’s unfair that only a few people profit and we all have to pay, but that should make us pay more attention to who we elect in office.

Ironically, every time, one side has to fix the other side’s mess. The other side, you know, that prides itself for outstanding fiscal conservatism and being strong on the economy. It is always their economy that needs fixin’.

Well, see, therein lies the difference between investing in financial products, playing the casino or doing Ponzi schemes, and ACTUALLY investing in something tangible, which builds infrastructure, creates jobs, and is a real project. It takes time to create a project for a bridge or a road or a school, get it approved and then commit the funds. It takes a second to click on your computer and play with bank deriviatives, the way you play a video game.

Again, easy to fall, hard to climb back. It doesn't take a click. It takes real work for a change, from all of us.

...About Arianna's article labeling unemployment "Obama's Katrina", I'd like to ask this:

How exactly do you create jobs, as the head of state? More precisely, how exactly do you create jobs in a time of recession?

If Arianna knows how to do it, she certainly should call and advise the French, British, German, Italian, Spanish, etc. governments, because they've been trying to figure that out for decades.

What Obama did in the first month in office was to vote close to 800 billion stimulus package to inject in domestic infrastructure, education, health care, tax cuts for the middle class, energy, research, etc. (all things long overdue) and thereby help creating new jobs and opportunities. If memory serves well, some states refused it. Why? God only knows.

Only half of that money is being currently used. The other half is still to be committed in various projects to come. It actually takes a longer time to invest than one would imagine.

No matter what anyone says, this is one good way to create new opportunities, while improving things at home. But mostly, it is exactly what the Government needed to do in a time of recession - inject money in the flow of the economy in a wide spread manner that trickles down the most (like construction, education, etc.).

Second thing he did was to lower the tax burden on small to medium businesses. Now he's lifting off them or easing the health care costs of employees.

What else would you do to create jobs? Seriously? I'd like to know. I'm sure there's something.

Prevent Big Business and Corporate America from exporting the jobs? Lower wages even more? Make sure there is a much smaller disparity between the rich and the poor and that the middle class can again afford to spend…. Basically allow for the middle class to exist again in its full power, after its systematic, deliberate economic extermination for 8 years and the other 12 before that. Well, many of these things for sure. But in a matter of a few months? I don't know.

A good economy is an economy that stems from and produces a very strong and powerful middle class. Countries where there are a few insanely rich people and all the others live bellow the poverty levels are very numerous in the world. They aren’t strong economies at all. America was headed this way – it was becoming a model of a week economy, with week currency, with 1% of very rich individuals, no middle class and a poor and a poorer classes.

Americans have really hard time grasping the reality of what happens when you have a dummy driving the bus for eight years straight: it destroys everything. In the beginning of the decade, there was a surplus, jobs were everywhere, and the economy was flourishing. All is gone. Now, we have to climb back that hill. Well, it's not that easy, my friends. Again, look at all the other industrialized countries. Unemployment seems to be stable between 10 and 15% in most of them. Once you fall there, it's not an easy path back.

But to blame Obama for that? Or to utter that he's not doing anything at all, such Dubya in New Orleans??? Come on! Wash those eyes, Arianna.

(Had to write this here, HP are not publishing this sort of opinions - they only publish the ones where you flatter the blogger. And it's relevant to Joan Walsh's post anyway!)