{"id":139,"date":"2009-12-17T21:47:18","date_gmt":"2009-12-18T04:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.constructonomics.com\/blog\/?p=139"},"modified":"2009-12-18T08:34:19","modified_gmt":"2009-12-18T15:34:19","slug":"stimulus-package-update-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/17\/stimulus-package-update-sort-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Stimulus Package Update – Sort Of"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went to the recovery.gov<\/a>\u00a0site today to get the latest news on the stimulus package and how much has been rolled\"stimulus out in an attempt to save the\u00a0woefully unemployed from forming a long winding line outside\u00a0every homeless shelter in the country.\u00a0\u00a0I had ambitious goals of giving\u00a0 a well organized description of how much money has\u00a0been\u00a0dolled and to whom those dollars have been so graciously distributed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bottom line was that I didn’t really get a full scoop about what was going on by the information that was\u00a0displayed on the\u00a0site.\u00a0 I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no\u00a0Marilyn Vos Savant<\/a> when it comes to interpreting tabulated information, but even to the most sharp witted web surfer, I think it may be difficult to drill down exactly what was going on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, I can tell you that according to recovery.gov, 640,329 jobs have been created\/saved as a result of the recovery act.\u00a0 I still can’t decide if that is good or bad, or how they can even come up with that number.\u00a0 I was also able to brilliantly ascertain that about $160 billion of the $275 billion set aside for contracts, grants, and loans have been awarded, however only about $64 billion of that money has been paid out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is all fantastic about what is going on with the stimulus and everything, but\u00a0my question is this: why is unemployment still at 10% for the country and a whopping 20% for the construction industry, which is as high (for both) as they have been since this whole mess\u00a0began way back in 2008.\u00a0 This is especially concerning when about\u00a0$150 billion of this\u00a0is being pumped\u00a0directly into the construction industry and the unemployment has remained the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think Ben Bernanke would have to explain the reason for the refusal of the US unemployment rate to decline, but\u00a0I think I have an idea as to why the construction industry may still\u00a0be stagnant.\u00a0 Well, actually two reasons.\u00a0 1.\u00a0 Commercial banks continue to hoard their money like misers.\u00a0 2.\u00a0\u00a0Construction projects that have been shelved for years are slower than molasses when trying to resurrect.<\/p>\n

We need to realize that there is no such thing as a shovel ready project.\u00a0 I really think the politicians missed this whole concept\u00a0when they started pouring money into it.\u00a0 Not\u00a0that it’s bad, but it just doesn’t happen over night.\u00a0 Trying to get public construction projects\u00a0to move is like trying to push a refrigerator up a hill.\u00a0 There’s\u00a0just a lot\u00a0of paper work and red tape, not to mention\u00a0the verification required of the plans, specs, and existing conditions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I won’t even go into the commercial banks now, but I\u00a0think they should be forced to lend money very soon.\u00a0 They were given bailout funds for a problem that they\u00a0caused in an effort to stimulate lending, and now they refuse to lend it and continue to give themselves\u00a0huge bonuses.\u00a0 It’s honestly the biggest crock I think I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to the recovery.gov<\/a>\u00a0site today to get the latest news on the stimulus package and how much has been rolled out in an attempt to save the\u00a0woefully unemployed from forming a long winding line outside\u00a0every homeless shelter in the country.\u00a0\u00a0I had ambitious goals of giving\u00a0 a well organized description of how much money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,4,34,5,35],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-construction-blog","tag-construction-economics","tag-federal-recovery","tag-john-poole","tag-stimulus-package"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}