I don't deny that someone might be motivated by self-preservation. But in order to have a point when you say that, you need to illustrate specifically how that motivation has manifested itself in the argument they've made. You can't just vaguely allege that it exists. It's about as illogical as arresting a guy for theft on the grounds that he needed money. The credit rating agency point is pretty irrelevant (even though it's an interesting discussion - conflict of interest was a huge factor, but to say it was the sole reason that those AAA ratings persisted where they shouldn't is again an oversimplification - but that is a completely different fun topic).
I do indeed work - in fact I just got a thing handed to me I need to figure out which probably has no answer and will require me looking through a whole bunch of stock option rules in the tax act to figure out how they apply to a weird situation and attempt to find some public disclosure somewhere that covers said weird situation. Gonna be a fun weekend. So I'm going to have to sign off here.
I've been taking a Socratic position throughout here because while I'm honestly just not really convinced either way. Now, I would challenge you to point out where I have committed an ad hominem or a straw man in here. I have a couple of times attempted to distill others' positions, but in each case made said distillation subject to that person's correction in the event that I have misinterpreted them. There's a reason for this - there would be no point in creating a straw man of your argument because I am not trying to defeat your argument. I am trying to get you to tell me what your argument actually IS, in its complete, coherent version, and then to justify how and why it works. I have gotten surprisingly little out of either of you beyond thin assertions, vague, nonspecific macro-level reasoning with zero justification ("cutting spending means others have more money to invest in small business"), and some stats which I honestly find to be of dubious assistance because of the historical context and the current state of the global economy (and I really don't think I'm crazy for taking that view).
I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, besides the fact that you guys really haven't expressed anything useful. Maybe, once a hypothetical reasonable person has considered all the available evidence, they will conclude the stimulus was a bad call. Very possible. I for one could certainly be convinced that that's the case. But if said hypothetical person comes to that conclusion on the basis of what little actual substance you or Woozy have posted in here, they're not really thinking things through.
