Pixie Dust

clipped from www.bloomberg.com It’s a jobs-creation program. No, it’s investment in our future. It’s a tax-relief plan. Wait, it provides assistance to consumers hardest hit by the economic recession. It’s legislation to jump-start the economy. No, it’s a recovery program. It’s a life raft for state and local governments. It’s a spending bill. Which is it? Fiscal stimulus is all things to all people. In other words, it represents the triumph of faith over reason. Attempts to spend their way out of a slump by Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush, Japan (in the 1990s) and Europe yielded little in the way of results, Mitchell says. There is no Santa Claus. The federal government can’t give something to one person without taking it away from someone else, either today or at some point in the future. There is a tooth fairy. It’s called the Federal Reserve. The Fed has pixie dust. It’s called a printing press. Unlike the fiscal authority, the Fed has the gift that keeps on giving.