The Blank Check City

"My administration is going to stand with you -- and fight alongside you -- until the job is done, until New Orleans is all the way back, all the way,"

-- President Obama

It's hard to imagine the statement and the endless task now. It may take another entire decade, maybe even two decades. It may take $1 billion, $5 billion, or even $20 billion.

New Orleans, up until Hurricane Katrina....was a town unlike any other in America. It survived off corruption. The cops, the town council, the mayor, the city departments, and even the education sector....all took money off the plate. They didn't care.

The city's entire purpose in life and industry....was tourism. Basically....you went to New Orleans to drink excessively and do things that you couldn't normally do in most towns in America.

So now, we owe New Orleans something that other towns would never get....a blank check.

It's funny over all the various hurricanes that came and went in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. Those towns and areas basically absorbed the situation and moved on. What you've got is a place that can't absorb anything....most folks just packed up and left....and now there's this blank check syndrome.

Cash-For-Something

There's an interesting site that I would recommend to read. Sarcastically done of course, there's this suggestion of taking our world famous "cash-for-clunkers" program and and use the concept for a "dollars-for-dumps" program.

To start with...folks in the past couple of months have become shocked over the current pricing scheme for used cars of the $1000 to $3000 value area. You used to be able to find a car lot in every town where...if you only had $1,200....you could go and actually buy yourself a car. Lots of folks needed that type of situation.

So today...with so many clunkers gone from the market....you can't find any $1,200 cars. In fact, you are beginning to see a very small market in existence.....and you have to start thinking about $4k cars instead.

Being from Bama, I can appreciate this type of sales situation. We are rich in small town carlots where you'd find a 10-year old car for $5k and it'd fit your pocket situation.

So our cash-for-clunkers program destroyed the market for $1k cars, and pretty much makes you have to find $3k to get a slightly better car.

This 'dollars-for-dumps' idea works in the same fashion. You get the President to come up with a trillion dollars....probably just sitting around anyway....and start buying cheap houses all over the country (especially in California)....and then you tear down the property.

We could even hire local unemployed folks to help tear down the homes.

So months would pass, and then you'd wake up one day to realize that home prices were rising five percent a year. And suddenly you couldn't find a $200k house anymore....you'd have to come up with $300k instead.

Then America would be saved from this terrible housing market crash that we are suffering through currently.

Yes, I realize that we'd have to send the President back to Norway for another Nobel Prize because this makes perfect economic sense to those guys......but we'd actually destroy enough houses to change the whole market.

Neat, huh?

I think these guys have a pretty good idea.

I was thinking along these same lines for the beef industry as well...."cash-for-beef"....and just have the government buy up 2 million head of cattle and just bury them in some nuclear site out west...and drive beef prices up to $40 a pound. Or this other idea of mine...."cash-for-beer"....and just have the government buy up all the beer distribution points in America....and drive beer up to $8 a bottle.