When my grandfather was my age, we had a bricks-n-mortar economy. People built things others would buy, or did things others needed done. Labor, the movement, balanced the professional class's clubby exploitative drives, and money was money, backed by assets like gold. When my grandfather was my age, a company whose stock price fell freely could watch it hit the floor. It could get a little deeper than zero, but not much. Today, we're coming to realize that the lies my parents were taught were already lies when they were learning them.

Today we listen in stupor as the DJIA and NASDAQ and FTSE and Nikkei, DAX, etc. follow a moth's trail around the zero. Speculation has been built into the economy. In business, despite the aforementioned MBA President's completely base intellections about any end in his sight for Iraq or anything else he started without ascribing a timeline, planning requires predictions. I will plan for X, and then work toward it, and in business the oranges are either bountiful or scarce, and my numbers have to adjust to match the world.

But those numbers don't match. In the speculative, nihilistic atmosphere of today, we must focus solely on the moment- make the trade now! Damn the torpedos: we have bonds. The macroeconomy is global, and the cabal of Wall Street types is running the show. These sales people need to sell, but they have no concept of 'make'. They sell derivatives, options, they trade in the hope their stock will lose value. If shares were subscriptions to popular companies, and if these people were walled away in some corner of Manhattan, it wouldn't matter. But they're the engines of wealth today. They can ruin entire companies, depress whole industries by the success or failure of their plans. If I am a trader, and I want to sell my stocks short, I could make some margin. But when I sell short I depress the value of the issue, and others follow me, devaluing the company.

So what would you do if the entire world economy was left as a 7-foot clay soldier? Completely hollowed out? You look for solids, and try to stack them within the superstructure,  and hopefully all the people lining the body politick can make their way to the new stack.

Venture and Speculation are important. Skills can be learned, and careful critical thinking and planning make the business world a great place to test an idea. The trouble comes when a new guy buys in. See, you don't always need friends and smarts to get yourself onto a board. You need stock. You could inherit that, if you planned wisely. You could buy it. Some earn it. But speculation is global, and we can't protect the world's investors. They don't cut us in when they make a bundle, and I'd rather not subsidize them.

Work comes in a few varieties. White collar work does include some necessary functions. Blue collar work is what we think of: guy picks something up; person grills a sausage; someone, please answer the phone! That labor movement professionalized work, which made labor cost more. Carnegies aren't motivated by fairness, so the capital class re-upped Labor. Now the guy whose hands assembled a thousand cars gets paid almost nothing when compared to the guy whose hands don't even touch a steering wheel or car door. And while the quality of the assembler's work has skyrocketed, the executive's job has been abyssmal. That professional, the manager? His job was to keep the company competitive and solvent. Today, with the competition largely gone to the opponent and checkbook completely out of whack, that professional is overseeing the termination of thousands of his labor colleagues.

Today we're in the middle of bailing out insanely large companies whose performance should have killed them in a laissez-faire market. One argument holds that we need these managers to remain in place so they can keep writing paychecks to their dwindling-by-design work force. Ensuring losing returns in the job market doesn't sound productive if jobs are desired.

I believe we do need a stimulus, but I think it has to also refocus the nation in ways that relieve some of the burden of managing our planet presently supported by the captains of industry and speculators on Wall Street. The first post-Carter generation to come through did its job, blasting through the financial doldrums as Reagan took over, blowing the doors off the national debt, ushering in a technological decade when real incomes rose and buying power increased across the socioeconomic spectrum by the time Clinton left us a balanced budget. We have some clear candidates for national priorities.

Why is health care so expensive? (We need to discriminate between health care and health. Health is not terribly expensive, but it's a lifestyle thing. What we pay for is influenced by the scarcity of health and the supply of alternatives to health.) It is absolutely true that of the millions involved in the health care industry, very, very few individuals actually treat patients. Nobody at the insurance company can treat you, but they have doctors and many, many lawyers on retainer to advise them on ways to prevent preventative care.

Why is energy so expensive? Because we're subjects of the extraction industry and it's self-affirming monopoly. Petroleum, hydrocarbons are not the only sources of energy, but wow they seem hard to replace given the rarity of alternatives.

Why is money so expensive? Money and finance seem like a no-brainer: What do people want? MONEY. What should I go to school for? MONEY. Funny, the Drexel University's business school is the Fox School of Business. And I argue the foxes are running the hen yard. They're also scheduling production at the refinery and dumping millions of dollars into campaigns to influence opinions of legislators, consumers and voters.

Back to stimulus, where should we stimulate? I argue it's in America's interest to invent the next propulsion technology to enable efficient transit, and it's our job to invent the next energy source. We also need to stop buying the things we shouldn't buy, and we should pay for what we get. I can't believe the nonsense of the RNC and other capitalist whores who suggest money put in the hands of consumers could end up anywhere else than in the banking and retail sectors. It's just that they want it first, so they can hand it out as if they're our patrons.

No more money for banks. Bad mortgages sold by the finance industry, which holds all the cards and shouldn't have been screwing itself, should be relieved at the consumer side. The banks did this to us. No money for the Big Three. When they react to the new energy and consumption reality they will prosper. Tax cuts? Fewer people are making money, and the money they're making is worth less all the time. No tax cuts.

Invest in energy development, confident in the direction of time. Everything has a value, and nobody can agree on it. So the Feds should broker re-evaluation of homes and mortgages for people with incomes. Nationalize health insurance: employers have announced they will no longer be on the hook for your survival aside from the money they give you for the work you did. Invest in infrastructure: build an electricity pipeline from the desert to the metropolitan centers. Take on the problems of water for the southwest.

Finally, I'd spend the stimulus on a giant witch hunt, to root out the Enron, et al conspirators who upended this thriving economy.