TAG | Finance
Obama from downtown! YESH!
Universal healthcare if I make this shot
Here are some websites I find credible:
www.finviz.com : Great site that aggregates and presents raw data to help with trading. I like that I can get a quick glance at a chart, fundamental data, and news for a company all on one page.
www.zerohedge.com : Pseudonymous blog about the finincal state of our country. Highly critical of our governement, specifically the fed, while mostly excluding political bias.
thinkorswim.com : trading software. I’m still very novice but I found that thier charting package and options analysis tools are best-in-class.
I’m trying to find a good forum or discussion board to talk with like minded individuals beyond the sites listed above. Any suggestions?
29
Cash for Clunkers: The true cost to taxpayers
0 Comments | Posted by Myles Pflum in Finance, gov
In these tough economic times, American tax payers (future and present) shoving out a $4,500 rebate on buying a new car sounds like a reasonable way to stimulate the economy.
But what if that amount was $24,000?
Edmunds.com, who knows about cars and has no obvious incentive to skew results, reports that the net increase in car sales from the $3 billion C4C program was 125,000 vehicles.
Well, it’s in how Edmunds crunched the numbers. A valid way to evaluate the program economically, it says, is to look at how many people purchased cars that otherwise wouldn’t have been bought. The firm says that number is about 125,000 cars. By that measure, the government spent $24,000 to generate each sale of a new car.
For comparison, the average price for a new vehicle in August 2009 was $26,915, minus an average cash rebate of $1,667.
In all, the government spent $3 billion on a program that provided cash toward 690,000 car purchases – about $4,348 per car. That makes 565,000 people who got as much as $4,500 to buy a car they would have bought anyway, according to the Edmunds analysis.
http://features.csmonitor.com/economyrebuild/2009/10/28/report-cash-for-clunkers-was-a-lemon/
We effectively front-loaded all our automobile demand for 2009 and 2010. What are the numbers going to look like in the post-cash-for-clunkers environement? Not very good. If you were going to buy a car within a year, you took advantage of cash for clunkers.
On a positive note, our GDP numbers are up because of it. Also, over half the vehicles sold were made in America, so it did keep some jobs afloat. But Cash for Clunkers is over now. It’s not sustainable.
http://www.cashforclunkersfacts.com/20090805-cash-for-clunkers-sales-data-by-manufacturer/
Don’t forget about all the debt we raked up buying these new vehicles. A majority of new car purchases are financed. We are already a debt laden society. Is encouraging people to go into debt to buy a new ride really a strong governement policy for the future?
