Here's an economic proposal that I think makes a lot of sense. We're talking about spending $700 billion to prop up a market for something that no longer has a market, thanks to it being abused and bungled out of existence as coordinated effort by all the top firms in America. That's in addition to untold hundreds of billions for similar props to the credit markets, and whatever the other bailouts have already cost us or are going to cost us. All of this to stabilize a financial sector that has doomed itself through simple greed and incompetence -- and is determined to take the entire world economy down with it.
That's an ineffective plan, and we all know it. I propose instead that Henry Paulson give that 700 billion dollars to me. In return, I'll stimulate the economy myself. I'll stimulate the hell out of it -- whatever you want. I'll spend it like it was water, and I was some sort of... water-spending guy.
The first thing I'd do? Build new solar and wind infrastructure, and make untold billions of dollars providing power to the nation. The walls of my corporate headquarters would be covered with solid gold, and the business park would be laid out so that from space, it would look like Calvin peeing on barrels of oil.
I'd create jobs like there was no tomorrow. My car is broken, so I'd hire 20,000 people to carry it mosh-pit-style into town whenever I needed to go shopping. I'd finance the arts, creating thousand-person choral groups to Rickroll my enemies in front of their own houses. Rush Limbaugh would be serenaded wherever he went from a fleet of low-flying zeppelins.
Rebuilding transportation? I'm on it. We need some bullet trains, and I'm just the guy to finance them. Oh, but I get to drive them sometimes, and I get to pick the color schemes, and I demand two per year to be reserved for my newest invented sport -- bullet-train jousting. And the trains should have game consoles built into every seat, so businessmen can play World of Warcraft while speeding off to their jobs each morning. If America's going to go into the crapper, at least folks will be able to immerse themselves in a fantasy world of axe-wielding mayhem in order to redirect those baser instincts that might otherwise be directed at their financial masters.
Space program? You bet. I'll make sure the International Space Station looks like the big wheel from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie was boring as hell, but I want a space station that looks like a big wheel. If it's got my name on it, even better. And I demand a new system of shuttles, and they should serve drinks. Even during takeoff.
And so on, and so on. If we're going to stimulate the economy, let's do it. Giving all that money to one American, as long as they're in a mood to spend it, would be the absolute pinnacle of trickle-down economics. As long as I'm that one American, what the hell -- I'm game.