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• Monday, December 1, 2008 11:42 PM

  If Americans are, in fact, spending less...

  ....is it not possible that the choices that they are making to do so involve identifying what is really important to them, and what is not - differentiating between what they need and what they don't? If so, is it not possible that that $400 billion cash infusion that our economy supposedly is so desperate for actually represents $400 billion dollars worth of stuff that people don't need? That actually seems to be what you are saying in this post.

  If so, why do we need to infuse the economy with those $400 billion useless dollars? Can we not view that $400 billion dollar loss in the economy as actually a net gain, in the sense that, the less you need, the more you actually have? If Americans have identified $400 billion dollars worth of stuff that they actually don't need in their lives, are we not, therefore, $400 billion dollars richer for having made that realization? Furthermore, given that the root of our current problem is a credit crisis stemming from a bout of unsustainably overleveraged spending - "We got into this whole mess by using cash extracted from wildly appreciating home equity valuations to buy whatever we needed or wanted, from healthcare to a new SUV to a second home" - would not a $400 billion dollar cash infusion of the type that you are advocating actually amount to the government simply propping up an unsustainable rate of spending on stuff that, as I have previously mentioned, we probably don't need?

  The invisible hand has two sides. Ignore this at your own peril.

  —Aaron Bonn Read Aaron Bonn's other letters
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