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Reply With QuoteStimulate government growth, maybe.
It is interesting that the people are screaming about the banks giving out a few million dollars worth of bonuses but never ask where the $787 billion is going.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../04/023286.php
While the last sentence is somewhat off the mark (the GOP can share the deficit/debt blame as well and the Chinese remark is simply a scare tactic), I'm amazed at the lack of accountability. People want to get up in arms over tens of millions of dollars that "disappeared" in a war zone, what about money spent in our own country that "disappears"?Where Is the Money Going? Who Cares?
April 9, 2009 Posted by John at 6:43 PM
You might have thought President Obama was kidding when he said it didn't matter what the $787 billion in "stimulus" money was spent on, because "spending equals stimulus." Think again. Byron York reports that Congress has no idea where the money is going, and many in that body apparently have no desire to find out:
The Republicans are relying on local press accounts that document the arrival of "stimulus" funds and, sometimes, say what the money will be spent on. This shouldn't come as a surprise. The "stimulus" bill didn't say with any specificity what the $787 billion was to be spent on. Rather, it appropriated money in broad categories and left it to government agencies to figure out what, exactly, should be done with it.[R]ight now, with the money actually beginning to flow, members of Congress have little or no idea where it is going. What, for example, is the Department of Housing and Urban Development doing with the $1.5 billion Congress approved for a new program called the Homeless Prevention Fund? Lawmakers don't know.
If they wanted, majority Democrats could demand real-time details from the Obama administration. But minority Republicans have no power to compel the administration to do anything. So Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican Whip in the House, and GOP Sen. John Thune have set up a working group to track spending as best they can.
You might think that two high-ranking elected officials would have ways to learn such things, but the fact is, they don't. At the moment, the best tools Cantor and Thune have are Google and the Lexis-Nexis newspaper database.
Not surprisingly, a large percentage of the money so allocated, with no effective oversight, is being wasted:
This sort of waste--and you can be sure that the $787 billion will largely be wasted--would be a scandal even if we had the money. But we don't. Instead, the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have mortgaged our children's future to the Chinese. For what?Such searches led the Cantor-Thune group to the Binghamton, New York Press & News-Bulletin for a glimpse into how HUD is spending that $1.5 billion in the Homeless Prevention Fund. In early March, the paper reported that the small town of Union, New York would receive $578,661 from the Fund, even though "Union did not request the money and does not currently have homeless programs in place in the town to administer such funds."
An article in the Altoona Mirror reported that the small central Pennsylvania town was going to receive $819,000 from the Fund even though Altoona officials "may not have enough of a homelessness problem to use it." And a Google search turned up a report from WHP-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania saying the city would receive $855,478 from the Fund, but does not know what to do with it.
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3
Stimulate government growth, maybe.
It is interesting that the people are screaming about the banks giving out a few million dollars worth of bonuses but never ask where the $787 billion is going.
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.
It is a scare tactic as China can't grow the rate its used to without a stronger US economy.
Last edited by xinhui; 11 Apr 09, at 02:40.
gunnut,
You will like the following from those god-less commie-ist.
"“The fiscal subsidy gives voting rights to the consumer,” he said.
China also has a 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) program to help the industry with automotive innovation.
In the United States, the government is providing $25 billion to help cover Detroit’s research costs in the coming years.
Mr. Zhang said that with a greater emphasis on incentives for electric car buyers, “we will cut back on the discretionary power of government agencies — otherwise, the companies will just fight for subsidies.”
April 11, 2009
China Details Incentive Plan for Electric Cars
By KEITH BRADSHER
BEIJING — Senior Chinese officials outlined on Friday how they aimed to turn their country into the world’s largest producer of electric cars, including a focus on consumer choice rather than corporate subsidies.
Speaking at a conference at the government’s prestigious Diaoyutai guesthouse here, the officials acknowledged that their efforts faced challenges in terms of the cost and safety of electric cars. They promised a nationwide effort by manufacturers, universities, research institutes and government agencies to overcome these obstacles.
Wan Gang, a former Audi engineer in Germany who is now China’s minister of science and technology, portrayed the country’s electric car initiative as central to China’s international competitiveness, but said that there were environmental goals as well.
“We need to be sustainable in different sectors, particularly in the auto sector,” he said.
Zhang Shaochun, a vice minister of finance, said that the government wanted to let the market determine which electric vehicle models would become popular. So while the government is providing some research subsidies, the main step will be to provide very large subsidies for buyers of electric cars — already up to 60,000 yuan, ($8,800), for purchases by taxi fleets and local government agencies.
“The fiscal subsidy gives voting rights to the consumer,” he said.
China also has a 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) program to help the industry with automotive innovation.
In the United States, the government is providing $25 billion to help cover Detroit’s research costs in the coming years.
Mr. Zhang said that with a greater emphasis on incentives for electric car buyers, “we will cut back on the discretionary power of government agencies — otherwise, the companies will just fight for subsidies.”
Chinese and foreign automakers have embarked on a number of demonstration projects for electric cars, with Nissan announcing one Friday in Wuhan, a city in central China. But very few electric cars are on the road in China yet.
While electric cars are rapidly improving, they remain roughly twice as expensive as similarly sized gasoline-powered cars, which also provide greater range, higher top speeds and better records for reliability. Mr. Wan, the minister of science and technology, raised another concern Friday when he noted that the industry had to look at safety as it sought to make electric cars ever lighter.
Electric car makers may find it easier to gain a following in the Chinese market than in other countries. First-time buyers in China are less accustomed to the power of gasoline-powered cars; most commutes are short and slow because of traffic jams; and Chinese law makes it hard for consumers to sue automakers for safety problems.
Miao Wei, the vice minister for industry and information technology, said at the conference that automotive sales and production set records last month; the previous records for both were set in March of last year.
Sales and production were running at an annualized rate of about 11 million vehicles last month, Mr. Miao said, indicating the previous records were narrowly beaten. In the United States last month, sales were running at an annualized rate of 10 million.
On Thursday, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said passenger car sales rose 10 percent in March from a year earlier. The group said sales of cars, minivans and multipurpose vehicles rose to a record 772,400. Including trucks and buses, vehicle sales were up 5 percent, to 1.11 million units.
Yale Zhang, a China specialist at CSM Worldwide, a vehicle market forecasting service, said that sales of small cars and small minibuses had surged because of a tax cut on vehicles with engines of less than 1.6 liters and because of a $730 subsidy introduced last month for car buyers in rural areas.
Mr. Miao, a former chairman of Dongfeng Motor, one of China’s biggest automakers, said that the ever-growing fleet of China posed three problems: air pollution, rising consumption of imported oil and traffic congestion.
“If these three bottlenecks cannot be addressed, the Chinese auto industry cannot grow sustainably,” he said.
Alternative-energy vehicles “are the only way out to address these challenges,” he said, without explaining how a shift from gasoline-powered cars to electric cars would address the chronic traffic jams in Chinese cities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/bu...gewanted=print
These posts are quite enlightening.......
http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/20...works-skeptic/
http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/20...t-ii/#more-823
well, the Chinese government does believe in the defense spending as stimulus concept.
Chinese Military Defense Stocks Surge on Increased Spending
Email | Print | A A A
By Zhang Shidong
March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Chinese military defense stocks surged in Shanghai and Shenzhen trading after the government said it will boost defense spending this year.
Centennial Brilliance Science & Technology Co., a radar manufacturer, jumped by the 10 percent daily limit to 4.17 yuan, rising for a third day, on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as of 1:15 p.m. local time. Sino-Platinum Metals Co., a manufacturer of high-purity and functional metals, surged the maximum 10 percent to 19.33 yuan and Xi’an Aircraft International Corp., an aircraft component maker, advanced 7.7 percent to 23.90 yuan.
China’s military spending will rise 14.9 percent this year to 480.6 billion yuan ($70.3 billion) to raise salaries of the standing army, from a revised 418.2 billion yuan last year, Li Zhaoxing, a spokesman for China’s legislature, said today at a press conference before the body starts its annual session tomorrow.
China’s defense spending has increased an average of 16.2 percent from 1999 to 2008, according to figures from the latest defense white paper published in January. The biggest increase was 20.4 percent in 2006.
To contact the reporter on this story: Zhang Shidong in Shanghai at szhang5@bloomberg.net
China's military equipment firm says Q1 sales rise 8.4%
english.chinamil.com.cn 2009-04-27
BEIJING, April 26 (Xinhua) -- China South Industries Group Corporation (CSIGC), one of the country's military firms, said Sunday that its first-quarter sales rose 8.4 percent year on year to 38.99 billion yuan (5.73 billion U.S. dollars).
The company pocketed 710 million yuan in profits in the first three months, with monthly profits increasing month on month, according to statistics released by the company. It did not give annual comparative figures for first-quarter profits.
CSIGC is a manufacturer of special equipment for the country's armed forces, and also produces equipment for civilian uses.
The company's products include special equipment, automotive spare parts, motorcycles, and equipment for power transmission and transformation, new energy and the fiber-optic industry.
In the first quarter, the company sold 300,000 sets of vehicles, up 13.2 percent year on year, according to the centrally administered state-owned enterprise. The growth was more than 9 percent higher than a 3.88-percent growth in the country's overall domestic auto sales in the same period.
It said sales from its power transmission and transformation, as well as new-energy sectors, jumped almost 60 percent year on year to 3.44 billion yuan. The company's sales of transformers surged 73 percent.
It did not offer figures on other categories of products.
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