Okay Agnes and Bill - I've had some sleep. Let's take what happened in Germany first. After World War I, the complex interactions of international trade and monetary policy were poorly understood. Because of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was asked to pay war reparations. This money added up to approximately 2 to 4% of their gross domestic product. Not much of a big deal. Unfortunately, Germany lost a lot when they lost World War I. Germany lost 13% of their prewar territory. They lost 75% of their iron stores and 26% of their coal reserves. Germany lost all of her colonies so therefore there was a significant decrease in what Germany could manufacture. This meant decreased amount of money in the German government's hands (lower tax revenues). Germany decided to simply print the money to pay back their war debt. So, I guess what I'm saying is there was an inbalance between what Germany's economy could produce and the amount of money that Germany was printing. This plus the crash of 1929 caused the hyperinflation that you were talking about. Thankfully, we're in a different situation today. To answer your other question, let me ask rhetorical question of what is a recession? For the most part, a recession occurs when there is plenty of supply and not enough demand. In 1993 and again in 2001, the United States went through "mild" recessions. These recessions were combated by the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates and increasing the money supply. To understand what's going on, Paul Krugman, Nobel prize-winning economist, explained it this way in his book, the Return of Depression Economics -- what if you and your friends developed a "co-op" in which everyone babysitted for everyone else. 20 or so families are involved in this co-op. At the start the co-op everyone has handed out coupons for babysitting. Therefore, when you call Sally, you have to have a coupon in order for Sally to babysit for you. What if at one of the meetings you decide that you don't want anyone to babysit for you because you are low on coupons. You would like to save your coupons until you really need them. Several people in the corporation over here you and think that that's a great idea. Soon, no one wants a babysitter. Everybody wants to babysit so that they can acquire coupons. In this example, the Agnes co-op is now going through a recession. There are several ways to handle this "problem." The Board of Directors of the Agnes co-op could pass a rule that everyone has to go out once a week. The other thing the Board of Directors could do would be to issue more coupons and therefore everybody would not want to hold on to coupons because they already had them. The same type of thing is going on in the economy. (There are tons of things going on in the economy but this is one of them.) We have plenty of supply but no demand. By decreasing interest rates and increasing the money supply, this is usually how you break a recession. It worked in 1993 and again in 2001. The problem today is that our banking system is on the verge of collapse and Wall Street has crashed and burned. There are no more brokerage houses. Trillions of dollars were lost. So, this complicates matters significantly. From my understanding, the Federal Reserve has done exactly what they were supposed to do. The next piece of the puzzle is putting people to work. If were able to put millions of people to work, then people will have money (helped by the increase in the money supply and decrease in interest rates) to buy stuff. Once people begin buying stuff and businesses will begin buying supplies and contracted with other businesses and this financial crisis should resolve. I truly recommend you reading The Return of Depression Economics. It is an outstanding book and it has helped me with my understanding of our financial crisis.

Thank you Agnes. Finally, a voice of reason that leaves party rhetoric out. EC, I have similar objections. I am ok with the infrastructure spending. I don't necessarily see it as a broad based stimulus, but I'll take it. I like the investment in energy/technology, as we are a country that thrives on innovation. The payoff will take some time, but this is the right direction. I like the tax cuts and the housing incentives, as these 2 things are the only things in this bill that I can point out that will impact the bottom line for all of us. After these things, I find very little that is stimulative in nature. I see things like medical care entitlement programs. I don't understand all the education money. I see pet projects that bloat the bill. It angers me that politicians of any stripe will slip these things in under the guise of stimulating the economy, and then cry foul when the other side votes against it. I am also concerned that this is being rushed... this current crisis mandates that we do it right. I think we are throwing good money after bad. With this bill and the financial bailout we stand at 1.5 trillion added to the debt in a very short amount of time.

oh, i need to get some sleep before I tackle this one. thanks for your comments. more this evening.

According to The New York Times, the Federal Reserve has printed more than $1 trillion worth of new money since September of 2008 in an effort to fight a recession. I could be wrong, but didn't Germany do the same thing, effectively making their currency worthless through excessive inflation? While I agree that something needs to be done, enough money has already been mismanaged with the first $780 Billion dollar bailout. Instead of returning the money into the economy through increased lending, the banks hoarded it and there was no oversight to where it actually went. How is pouring more money into the same failed institutions going to help those of us who don't have massive debt, pay our bills (mostly) on time, and don't use credit cards. What ever happened to being accountable for one's actions. Instead what I see is people being rewarded for failure. What happened to the "free market?" America experimented with large-scale expansions of government spending in the 1930s with the New Deal and again in the 1960s and 70s with the Great Society. These expansions of government spending coincided with economic failure then, so I don't know how it will be different now. There is, however a role for government in providing certain public goods that the "free market" may not be able to efficiently provide. If financing is available at favorable rates, it may make sense to take a long-term view and begin projects that are legitimately justified on their merits. Public works spending is not necessarily stimulative, because borrowed dollars are taken out of the private sector. The Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday this week that "the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing. " (Washing Times) I guess really what I am getting at is that this bill is not something that needs to be passed at light speed. This is a HUGE spending bill and with such massive amounts of money there needs to be proper oversight as well as sufficient review to make sure that all this money will be gong to legitimate projects.My other question is where is this money coming from? Are they just going to print more? Are they borrowing from other countries? I am trying to find out where it is coming from and how it will be paid back because these are also serious issues that I really don't know the answer for. I am not looking for partisan oriented answers, and am not interested in the "evil dems," "evil r's," etc. To me, that kind of dialouge is counterproductive and keeps people divided instead of looking for serious solutions. This is not a small amount of money to just be thrown around, it needs serious consideration before it is approved.