America to Obama: Stimulate Me!

Such are the findings of a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll on what to do about our sagging economy:

As a whole, the nation's mood remains glum, with three out of four people surveyed expecting the recession to persist for at least an additional year.

Asked about the economic-stimulus package, now estimated to cost $850 billion over two years, 43% of people surveyed called it a "good idea," while 27% said it is a "bad idea." The rest didn't have an opinion.

Even Republicans and independents think GOP lawmakers should work to move the legislation forward.

Of course, there is a catch. Americans, bitter about the way the first round of Wall Street and banking bailouts turned out, want to know what's in it for them this time. Another poll captures the "fool-me-once" anger brewing beneath the surface of the electorate:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of American adults are opposed to a government economic recovery plan that does not cut taxes, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

While Bank of America (one of the too-big-to-fail variety) and the government negotiate another taxpayer cash infusion, it's no wonder that people are feeling a bit spiteful about the lack of transparency to Henry Paulson and George Bush's magic fix. Like disgruntled shareholders of Apple, average Americans wonder whether they've been duped. Why hasn't the stimulus stimulated?

The answer, of course, is not as simple as the ones culled from yes-or-no survey questions. If you solely focus on credit, for instance, there are signs that the first round cash infusion may be starting to work. Still, the battle here is more akin to fighting a California wildfire with a few measly garden hoses. For every hot spot you managed to soak with water, a new wind kicks up scattering sparks across waiting kindling. As a result, the conflagration continues to spread.

One only needs to check out the latest headlines from The Great Depression News:

Nationwide home foreclosures were up 81 percent in '08.

Jobless claims continue to rise at a worse than expected pace.

People are flocking to libraries. As a novelist, this sounded like great news at first. But it turns out they're all just going to use the free internet to look for jobs.

Even Google is cutting its workforce.

All of this brings us back to stimulus. Congress votes today on whether or not to release $350 billion in Tarp money from the first bailout to still-not-technically-your-president Barack Obama. They should. We must not delude ourselves into believing that the consequences of doing nothing are indistinguishable from the stimulus we've undertaken so far. In part, though that statement may seem to perfectly describe what has already happened, we really cannot envision the devastating results we'd have witnessed if the government had allowed our nation if we'd let our financial sector go into free-fall. Consider the collapse of our largest banks. The wiping clean of the FDIC insurance fund. The immediate shuttering of the big three automakers. The end of the insurance industry as we know it. These are but the first dominoes in a long and intricate chain. Our current unemployment rate of 7.8% is peanuts compared to what inaction would have meant.

So, while there are plenty of things to be angry about--Freddie and Fannie, lax governmental regulation, bold-faced swindlers, a skyrocketing deficit, and a lack of accountability to date on the money already paid out-- it would be wise to temper one's outrage when it comes to how to move forward.