I don't believe there's much to be optimistic about either. "Anxious" is a much better description of how people should feel.

It's all but certain that 2009 will be another bad year for the economy. It's equally clear that if the new administration did nothing other than cut some taxes and try to get Congress to control spending, the recession would last several years and probably would become a full-blown depression. So the "kitchen sink" plans being put together are nothing more than a big acceleration of spending with the objective of reducing the unemployment rate, pumping money into the economy in an attempt to increase economic growth, and most importantly try to improve consumer confidence so that they will begin spending as well.

Our economy operates like a giant steam engine--when it's running fast, only minor adjustments, small amounts of fuel (stimulus) are needed to keep it ticking away. But when it slows to a near stop as is the case today, major amounts of new fuel (money, stimulus) needs to be thrown on the coals to accelerate it up to top speed again.

Some have proposed that another wave of rebates or tax reductions to consumers would be sufficient stimulus to reverse the recession. Unfortunately, the rebates given last year didn't have that effect. Taxpayers simply saved the rebates or paid down debt, but did not provide any stimulus to the economy by spending the rebates buying new, preferably big ticket items. The idea of another big rebate this year as the foundation of the stimulus has been rejected by almost all economists because of the high risk that taxpayers again would not spend the rebates but save them, producing no positive effects on the economy.

So other means of pumping money into the economy appear necessary. The Obama economic team decided that simply permitting Congress to decide how the stimulus money would be spent presented as much risk as hoping that the consumers would spend and not save. They thought that Congress would tend to spend a lot of money on pet projects that would provide little long term benefit to the country and may not even get the economy re-started.

So the new administration decided to pump the money into the economy in the form of grants to construct or improve much-needed infrastructure that would produce long-term benefits to the domestic economy--a "kitchen sink" of proposed projects. Roads, bridges, schools, a new energy distribution system, money for alternative energy research are all projects which would not be a waste of the taxpayer's money and they would be expected to have the effect of restarting the stalled U.S. economy.

The only real question is how much money will it take to produce the desired economic results. No one has an answer to that question, so the approach being taken is to err on the high side in case more money is needed to begin to produce economic growth.

Will some money be wasted? Certainly. There's no way that a trillion dollars can be spent in a short time without some wasteful expenditures. That type of spending will get all kinds of public criticism and they should. But the factors that the public should be attentive to at the same time is whether unemployment is declining, whether economic growth is rebounding, whether tax revenues are increasing, and whether the consumers are feeling better about the future. If those things occur, the economic stimulus plan developed by the Obama economic team will be working.

But again, the proper feeling we should all have is anxiety. Regardless of how much is spent, there's no guarantee that the economy will rebound. What it boils down to is that this is a trillion dollar economic experiment. Neither the poiticians or the economists have ever faced this type of problem before, so their proposed solutions are totally theoretical. But what is known for sure is that if the new administration didn't press for this type of action, all of our lives, our country and our economy would be far, far worse off than they are even today. If their plans don't work we'll all be a part of a total collapse of the American society. We should all pray that the plans being curently developed and described work, and work quickly.