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Run for cover! Change your identity! The Government is going to fix the economy!

After spending a gazillion dollars or so to bail out failing mortgage lenders - the self-regulating ones who made deceptive loans to under-qualified buyers - and after deciding that the economy may be "slowing," and that inflation may be outpacing income; after they figured out that $3.50 or $4.00 a gallon for gas might have an impact on family finances; and after becoming somewhat sympathetic about the outrageous prices of the food we kinda' need to survive, the Fed is pulling an old trick and throwing us a bone in the form of a tax rebate. We're encouraged to use our unexpected windfall to "stimulate the economy" and end what nobody wants to admit is a recession. Some pundits have, of late, conceded that we may be in the beginning of a recession, but they're not really ready to commit to that.

Please. Gimme' a break! If this might be the beginning of a recession, Heaven help us if it doesn't reverse itself soon. Last month, 80,000 jobs were lost. A month or so ago, three major automobile manufacturers, among countless other employers, announced they were offering buyouts to thousands of employees - the older, experienced, knowledgeable ones, their best people - so they can replace them with younger, inexperienced, and considerably cheaper workers (Ford was quoted as saying so in an article in the New York Times recently).

So here's a question: if you send a few tens of thousands of formerly middle-class workers straight to the unemployment or welfare lines, who on earth do you think will buy the products the "newbies" will build? Since the newly poor, ex-middle class folks can no longer afford your products (their welfare checks aren't quite big enough to keep food on the table AND buy a 2009 pickup or Hummer) and since our lousy economy is dragging down the rest of the world's economies with it, where is your customer base? I'd be willing to bet my last dollar that when you eliminate the middle class you helped build, sales just might slip a teensy bit. By the way, if I lose the bet, I won't be able to pay up until my next Social Security check arrives. I forgot I'd already spent my last dollar.

In order to save the nation from stagflation, recession, or whatever term they're using this week, the Fed is going to give us a bunch of money to go shopping to stimulate the economy. I'm not going to guess at your financial situation, but I (and many thousands like me) have been banished

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