Arkady's Thoughts

Judd Gregg's announcement today that was not accepting the Commerce position was perplexing and strange. Citing a fluff reason - philosophical differences - weeks after the pick makes no sense. In order to understand how this affects people, it's best to put ourselves in their shoes. This is the official statement "Senator Gregg reached out to the President and offered his name for Secretary of Commerce. He was very clear throughout the interviewing process that despite past disagreements about policies, he would support, embrace, and move forward with the President’s agenda. Once it became clear after his nomination that Senator Gregg was not going to be supporting some of President Obama’s key economic priorities, it became necessary for Senator Gregg and the Obama administration to part ways. We regret that he has had a change of heart". Conservatives: This is bad news for us as we were happy to see this RINO go and self-destruct as one of the three Republicans in

Congressional committee talks have resulted in what appears to be a deal reached between the two legislative bodies. The price tags keeps fluctuating between 780B and 834B and as of now it seems like it's on the lower end of the spectrum. Differences that amount to 5% of the total package are not serious enough to sway one's opinion, however what the actual bill contains seems to be different than the original House passed bill. Because the actual provisions are still being ironed out and the possibilities of additional amendments being added still exists I will refrain from going over the recently added items. Fundamentally the original problem with the bill still remains, there is a significant lack of anything really stimulative. Even if we account for the expanded shovel ready money from 30 to 45+ billion, the impact is negligible. Tax cuts are still not existent and and as previously highlighted , tax rebates and an AMT patch are nothing new. In fact the rebate checks wil