Better than a Bailout

Jeff Jacoby has it wrong (Better than a Bailout, Boston Globe, December 14, 2008: K9).

The tax holiday will go they way of the $600 checks we all received in the spring: paying down debt; under the mattress; or into the bank. It will not result in the kind of stimulus the United States economy now needs. There is much wrong with the bailout; it should have gone to make the mortgages whole rather than the purchase of the derivatives. But Congressman Gohmert's plan which Jacoby extols is not the answer. The answer is massive government spending and -- alas -- massive government borrowing in the short term which will mean major tax increases in a few years to pay down the debt.

Sent to Boston Globe