I have held off on posting more information on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ongoing negotiations in the Senate due to the minute by minute changes and even a question of it's passage.

As usual the talking heads on cable news only talk about victory and not the specifics or credible analysis.

Previous posts include CBO analysis and other economists' analysis with potential stimulus effect. See Part II and Part I.

Here are the latest congressional actions.

The new cost is $780 billion dollars....or $805 billion...or what's another few billion? About $110 billion stripped from the previous Senate version.

The BLS reports today that January lost 598,000 jobs in the United States, pushing U3 to 7.6%.  This isn't a very scary figure, which is why they report it in the news.  U6 is much scarier- 13.9%.  But I contend that neither of these tell the real story from a "the economy should provide first level Maslow needs to the people" point of view.

Instead, I propose that the real story is answered by the question, what is the ratio of dependents (non-labor people) to workers (people with jobs).  This includes, of course, sole-income investors (those who rely on dividends from investment as their sole source of income), stay-at-home parents, the disabled and sick, and children all as dependents.  It also includes all the unemployed as dependents, if you don't have income from a job then you're living off of the income of other people in one form or another for the most part.

“Once upon a time, a man went on a journey, and summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey.

The one who had received five talents went off right away and put his money to work in a Wall Street investment bank speculating in complex derivatives.

In the same way, the one who had two took out a negative-amortization, stated income subprime mortgage on a McMansion.

But the one who had received one talent went out and invested in a money market account, which dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money in it, earning only 2% a year.

Today was the day when California's budget problems went from bad to worse.

Since legislators have yet to produce a solution to California's $42 billion dollar budget deficit, state money has now completely stopped flowing outward.

Declaring itself officially broke, the state government will begin issuing IOU's instead of check for grants, schools and any other organization or program which was previously receiving funding. Additionally, your California income tax refund check this year will not be sent out until after a balanced budget is passed. Those who have already filed their taxes will get an announcement noting the delay.

By now you would have to live in a cave to not experience the blow back in the simple act of buying U.S. steel. This is the Buy American provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

This is not even the real issue. The question really should be why are not U.S. taxpayer funds to be used first and foremost to create jobs for U.S. workers?

Banks receiving massive U.S. taxpayer funds are firing U.S. workers while keeping temporary foreign guest workers. Why? Because they are an important conduit to offshore outsource and they are cheaper.