Page 20 - Stimulus Programs News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

International ant research. >> love that one. >> that's a good one. >> we're getting to the good ones. $308 million for a joint clean energy venture with british petroleum. does that kind of burn you? number one, this is my favorite. $554,000 for the forest service to replace windows in a closed visitors center in mount st. helen. ladies and gentlemen, that's the top five. those are my favorite. how geitner or anyone in the government can defend that is totally beyond me. >> well, you know, jonas max-ferris. >> jonas might be able to -- you tell me. is this ok? >> i will defend it. i'll tell y...

When you consider how much money was thrown in to all these stimulus packages. you look at the cost, for example, of cash for clunkers per car, two, three, four years from now we might be saying, gosh, our deficits are really high and our spending has gone way out of control, what do we get in the long run out of it? bear if mind, 15%, 16% of americans were underemployed right now, even while we are seeing some improvement in parts of the car industry. so, yeah, you could argue this was a good use of stimulus dollars, because we're seeing a positive result, but this is a big body of work that ...

To know. it looked like we were sort of gaining momentum earlier in the year. now we've had two down months of sales back to back here. it seems the recovery is shifting into lower gear. the key catalyst to spending obviously would be the jobs, which has been eluding us from the recovery. small businesses are up against taxes and restrictions and a lot of paperwork. they are just not hiring. until that's fixed, this is how it's going to be. very touch and go. and consumers will feel pessimistic. >> how are retailers trying to lure shoppers back into the stores? >> they are doing everything the...

Sort of touch and go here. we were gaining some momentum, i think, earlier in the year to the point where retails were feeling comfortable, charging full prices, consumers were feeling comfortable paying full price. now we sort of reverted a little bit. shifted into lower gear to some extent. and seem to be losing some momentum, which is why there's growing fear both on wall street and main street. >> what do we see some of the retailers doing to try to lure the customers back in? >> some of these retailers are coming up with their own stimulus programs, if you will. you've got walmart opening...

Through this. a lot of the country is less so. i think there really is a problem throughout this country. the economy is not improving as fast as you and i would like it to do. so to some extent, this is another economic psych. it doesn't mean it isn't painful, it doesn't mean people don't need our help. the question becomes how do you get out of it? i would be on the side of stimulus programs are good. definites do matter, but vgs said that, we've got to keep making investments. some peop . >> if new york city does not get the money it's count on from the