It's clear we're in the midst of a massive de-leveraging. The parts of the bill that give money directly to people will be used as part of the deleveraging, effectively transferring debt from individuals to the government. The rest of the grab-bag of stuff won't do much as it'll take too long and be done by people who probably already have work.

It may hasten the deleveraging process slightly, but it certainly won't get people to "feel good" and spend money, and all this cash sloshing around could cause a nasty round of inflation once the deleveraging and deflationary pressures are gone.

One aside: you can have both inflation and deflation at the same time. Despite sounding like opposites, they are actually two different things. Inflation is caused by money supply, which has been massively cranked by the world's governments. Deflation is caused by collapsed demand, which drives prices down.

That's exactly the scenario I'm seeing, Foobar. The wild card is the overhang of dollars outside the borders. Watch the yuan.

I’m voting make things worse. The best (or least awful) aspect of the Porkulus Bill is that some people will use their extra thirteen dollars a week to deleverage some of their personal debt. The bulk of the spending seems to be little more than the government party looting the public treasury (or rather government credit card) to pay off its coalition members.

The economic recovery will take longer because another $800 plus billion has been taken out of the private capital markets which makes it even harder for businesses to expand and create jobs (which is ultimately what we need for a true recovery).

When the recovery does happen, we will probably see higher inflation as the effects of the increased government spending takes hold which will be when taxes and/or interest rates get raised.

What Thorley said. George Santayana said, "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it." If you liked the 1970s, you'll love the 2010s, 'cause the 2010s are going to be the 1970s on steroids. The good news is that the Obama catastrophe will keep conservatives in power for fifty years. The bad news is it will probably take them that long to repair the damage.

Even buying into Keynesian theory this won't work very well. Krugman et al work under the premise, quite literally, that the markets (the people) see government churning out rivers of money and will be more inclined to spend. That assumption underlies the entire attempt.

But just ask yourself this- do you feel more likely to go out and spend money today as compared to before this monstrosity was passed? Or more likely to protect what you have?

The answer is pretty obvious. Look, if what Obama and Krugman were selling was logical, the government should spend 100 trillion, or 1000x that. Why not? But the reality is all this borrowing is crowding out other investments, as well as making everyone on the planet nervous about the solvency of the US government. What if we have a bond sale and nobody comes? This is what happens when academics get behind the wheel. No common sense.

Worse, has anyone considered that we CURRENTLY spend about a quarter of our yearly national budget paying interest on the national dept? What do you think we'll be paying in two or three years? Half? More? FOR SURE. So do we keep borrowing to pay the interest? If so that percentage will engulf the budget. Cut spending? HAHAHA. No, they will raise taxes monstrously. As in, not seen since WW2 at least. That is pretty much an inescapable conclusion. And it may well be a feature and not a bug for the Dems.

But just ask yourself this- do you feel more likely to go out and spend money today as compared to before this monstrosity was passed? Or more likely to protect what you have?

Answer: I’m even more inclined to save than before but rather than investing it or purchasing my first home, I’m keeping it in my savings account. The reason being that I know that eventually taxes are going to be raised to pay for the latest borrowing binge and even if my income doesn’t put me in the “targeted” bracket, it will doubtlessly hit my employer and my employer’s customers which ultimately means it will “trickle down” to me and everyone else who works for the “wealthy” or works for someone who does business with “the wealthy.” Even though I’m part of the 93% employed, I want to ensure that I have a sufficient buffer to protect myself.

In addition the baby boom generation gets closer and closer each day to when they will begin drawing on and bankrupting Medicare and Social Security. Since the current Congress and President both came to power in part by opposing any sort of reform that didn’t involve raising taxes, increasing benefits, and imposing price controls, my generation is looking to get seriously fraked with higher taxes, lower returns and less medical innovation to subsidize the people who have been voting to loot the treasury to vote themselves benefits since FDR and LBJ.

I was a little unsure how to answer this, but because the focus was on the recession, I voted "make little difference." The average duration of a recession is thirteen months, so I think the recession will probably be over by October or earlier. Inflation, the financial panic, localized economic issues, excessively tight lending . . ., who knows?

"One aside: you can have both inflation and deflation at the same time. "

Foob, that's crazy talk. If that were possible Paul Krugman would know about it, right?

Wholesale inflation takes biggest jump in 6 months

This just keeps getting better and better.

Actually, I think that is crazy talk; Per Merriam Webster,

Inflation
2: a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services

Deflation
2 : a contraction in the volume of available money or credit that results in a general decline in prices.

Can't have a general price level increase and decrease at the same time.