How will the economic stimulus package affect your business?

Never leave home without your goggles.>>>

Sarah Said: How will the economic stimulus package affect your business?

It affected my work in that as soon as it was announced, I got a $100K/year job (which I just walked off of to go back to work for myself again after only 2 months. LOL ).

I already see the effects. It's not actually monetarily as much as it's "attitude". I've noticed people now wanting to pull the trigger on jobs that they'd been holding off on. There's this sense now that things are finally being attended to and that something is at least being tried.

We have the money...people are just being tight about it (as is the case whenever there have been active wars).

I see a lot of work being freed up now and with all the incentives for homeowners to repair their homes (just like in the 90's that caused the boom economically), we're going to get out cut.

Matter of fact, this seems like the early 90's all over again to me. Only this time, I'm not a newbie in his 20's but a seasoned vet who just turned 40 with the experience of how to ride this wave that's about to come in.>>>

Hi 2ndgen,

Good to see the positive attitude in Government is having a positive effect.

The Irish Government would do well to follow a similar course because there are people here with plenty of cash sitting in bank accounts doing nothing positive.

I think there is a feeling of shock here, most countries can take an internal downturn because there is usually the safety valve of being able to move to another country or where investments can get a reasonable return.

The difference with the present situation is all modern economies have been hit so any answers must come from within each country, perhaps our people will recognise that being paid 3 time more than people in countries like Poland for the same quality of work was not sustainable.

I think one of the big lessons will be we can't afford to ship all manufacturing to countries like China, the Walmart era was good while it lasted I believe if our respective governments fail to recognise that we should be producing goods in our own countries at prices that are competitive in other countries balancing trade budgets will not be possible.

If our Governments fail to see that the financial services sectors need to be overhauled instead of just patched up to the point where they go back to business as usual nothing will have been learned and it will be just a matter of time before the same thing happens again.

Relying on a strong construction sector where consumers borrow way past their means for houses instead of buying the starter homes they need at prices they can afford is what has us in the present mess.

Banks allowed greed to cloud their judgement and were lending way beyond what the borrowers could afford to repay, in turn the borrowers were left with no option except to demand higher pay making industry uncompetitive.

I believe the picture is very similar in both our countries, our Governments were benefiting from the high tax resulting from the strong construction sector.

Strong leadership would have called in the banks early and set strict guidelines for lending which in turn would have kept prices realistic and instead of crashing both sectors would have cooled and not imposed the need for the high incomes that made our economies unstable.

The legality of imposing sanctions on the financial sector may have been in question, I believe the laws should be changed as part of the present re-structuring, the changes should be based on common sense.

Bonuses should only be paid to the top executives based on sound growth and profitable trading which does not cause long term difficulty for other sectors of society and business.

The crazy practice of paying executives millions per year based on turnover instead of profits must also be addressed, with all the problems we are having in the banking sector one executive tried to get away with paying himself one million euro as his pay and another million in bonuses in a sector that would have collapsed without government intervention !

Such action is exactly what makes consumers extremely cautious about spending their hard earned savings because it clearly displays the Government is still not in control of the financial sector.

I hope the feel good factor in the US starts to display positive results soon because it appears that consumers are willing to spend if they can see they are getting value for their money.>>>