Like any loan, it has to increase in value faster than the rate of interest. If you borrow at, say, 5% to invest in your business, and your business can earn 10% after all is paid, then the loan was worth taking out. If the business returns only 4%, the loan was a mistake. In a recession, lots of skilled people lose their jobs. People who could be doing useful work are sitting around doing nothing. The aim of the stimulus is to get these idle people back to constructive work. If the output that these people create exceeds the interest on the money borrowed to create the stimulus, the country has gained. It doesn't have to come back directly in taxes. Some of it comes back in benefits not claimed by people who have jobs; more of it comes back when these people spend the money they have earned, thereby creating more jobs for other people, in a virtuous spiral. This is the mirror image of the vicious spiral that created the recession. When the economy is working well, everybody has jobs. The government should then consider taking money out of the economy to reduce demand. If there is high demand and supply cannot increase because there are no more workers, prices rise (inflation) and imports are sucked in. Conversely, when the economy is working badly and perfectly employable people do not have jobs, government should push money into the economy to get these people back into jobs. But, as ever when money is being spent freely, it must be extremely cautious about not spending money wastefully - there will be an enormous number of causes, some much more worthy than others - making plausible cases for a share of the handout.

It can't. Careful! You're starting to do the one thing all politicians fear from their followers ... to THINK!

Who says the stimulus is designed to or is helping the economy? The baron bankers are the only ones benefitting here from anything and everything

Did you know....If all the money we owe was payed back in full there would be no money in circulation? The money we have on hand to pay back that loan, was given to us as a loan, from the same people we owe all the other money to. It all comes from the same place. Money=debt debt=power The people we owe money to know that they are the only ones who can create it. They know how much they have given to us. They know that it was ALL with interest attached. They know that we have no way of creating our own out of thin air. And they know that we will always be in debt to them. This gives them power.

It's helping the economy in that instead of going into rich dude's offshore bank account, it's going to help working class folks. Which is where a goodly portion of the profit margins of the last 8 years should've gone, and would've prevented this recession.

It's not going to help,,this money has to be payed back with interest and your grandchildren will be the ones paying it back.

Sure - what is borrowed comes at a cost. The hope is that the cost to lend ourselves money is less than someone or many getting laid off, kicked out of their house and not be able to pay taxes.

I suspect that doing nothing would have helped the economy more. And now we'll never know. The sad thing is that the economy WILL recover, it generally works on a cycle, and the stimulus plans will be credited with saving us all. In the meantime money only goes to those lucky corporations fortunate enough to be deemed 'too big to fail'. . Failure is exactly what badly run businesses are supposed to experience. What's good for a mom and pop store is good for General Motors.

it is mostly helping the "economy" of the merchants....not the "economy of the people..its just at the People's expense/suppression....it aids the government control of merchant economy and peoples with money: the Peoples ...the stimulus is not for us....its for the government to get control and the frivoulous merchants to continue ... no need to worry about the dollars....its not our worry because nothing we can do....thats in the President and governments control...we just carry the burden while our farmers and little business owners collapse and fall to the wayside...:0

They give a little and we give a lot back. They gain.

Its not helping. Its only delaying the inevitable, nasty, terminal and inevitable collapse of the greed centred economy from which there will be no recovery.

You can't use the logic that caused the problem to solve the problem.

it's not. and it will only get worse in the long run... here's some points.

its not...

It's like getting a $5 gift card to a store. Typically, when you go to the store you will spend more than that $5.