Dollars for Dishwashers
Green for Groceries – also known as Dough for Dough
Benjamins for Bicycles – for the environmentalists out there.
Money for Motorcycles – that one is too unsafe. Ralph Nader would have a field day with this one
Cash for Cottages
Notes for nothing
Payments for Primary School – I might be allright with this one.

What rhymes with specie? Could not think of anything.

That seems to be a contradiction of terms. Calling any Fed Chairman a libertarian is like calling any absolute monarch a democratic statesman. The centralized monetary policy attempted by the fed is not a function of a free market. Likewise, the proposed national theft and corruption perpetrated by the banks is not necessarily a product of liberty.

Dealer Registrations:

Number Submitted – 24,238
Number Approved – 20,495

Dealer Transactions:

Number Submitted – 133,767
Dollars Submitted – $563.8 million

Where did the rest of the money go?

Nice doing business with you taxpayers!

Post-bailout, the manufacturers are now essentially government/union owned and run – so they are now even more stupid than the prior ownership.

I agree. However the pain and chaos would have led to the same dipshits to feel the need to do something, anything to avoid the pain. The pain of course would have been more foreclosures (what percentage, no one knows); insurance-like contracts would have had to be honored or reneged on, which, either way would have put severe strains on the financing companies; and banks would have many foreclosed homes as assets.

One thing is for sure, minus any type of bailouts, the people that walked away from the mortage committments, would have had bad credit and would have found it tough to find a place to rent — much less live — with a glut of homes on the market. But you, muirgeo, would have probably felt sorry for these people and wanted congess to help them out.

All I know is top bankers are taking home big bonuses again and the fed seems to have played the cards for them over the American people all these years.

I don’t claim to have any answers but it is interesting that diverse people like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders are on the same side of the issue.

While, I cant say with certainty the cause and effect, here are some interesting numbers I found. According to the EIA, the total vehicle-miles traveled increased from 1,215 billion in 1983 to 2,287 billion in 2001, an increase of 88.2%. During that time, the U.S. population only increased 20.4%. So, the average person traveled 56% more miles. In that same time frame, the fuel economy increased from 15.1 mpg to 20.2 mpg, an increase of 33.8%. Again, I cannot say with certainty the cause and effect, but from 1983 to 2001 the average person traveled 56% further while fuel economy only improved 33.8%, meaning that average person used more fuel even with improved efficiency.

Data taken from: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/rtecs/archive/arch_datatables/rtecshist_datatables.html

No one here will dispute that the program will help the new automobile industry, but that is not the same as helping the economy as a whole. You could take $10 from each of us and give it to your friend to buy a new TV, of course that will help your friend and the TV retailer, but that does not mean the rest of us are better off.