Rescue plans offer little hope

You want to believe. You want to think the bailout and the stimulus will work.

But the more you pay attention, the more your faith is tested.

You try not to recall that this financial crisis began in August 2007, and you fight the impulse to calculate that was 17, 18 months ago. And still the crisis continues, as if the $350 billion bailout and last year’s stimulus and rebates were little more than spitting into a hurricane.

You read that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says about half the new administration’s $825 billion stimulus won’t kick in for another year or two. You read a list of projects included in the stimulus and it begins to seem more like old times. Less like a response to an economic emergency and more like pork and pet projects of the new ruling party.

The numbers are getting too large to wrap your mind around. A million, you understand. A billion, you’ve grown used to, although $700 billion here and $825 billion there strains your comprehension.

A trillion is a number from science fiction, having something to do with light years and space travel.

Yet, you’ve been told our federal budget deficit this year will be $1.2 trillion. Add in the bailout and the plans to rescue us, and they are speaking in a foreign language, using terms such as $2 trillion.

You try to ignore the fact that one day the taxman will want to collect on that debt.

And you can’t seem to shake the notion that if overreaching and overextending got us here, how does overreaching and overextending get us out? And if going where no stimulus has gone before isn’t overreaching and if increasing the deficit to $2 trillion isn’t overextending, then those words have no meaning.

And with all that, you read about continuing layoffs and store closings and foreclosures. The year-end statement from your 401(k) arrived last week, and you still haven’t opened it.

You grasp at the news that sales of existing homes rose in December over November. Could it be?

But then you remember that November and December aren’t usually home-buying months. Further, you discover that nearly half, or 45 percent, of those December sales were foreclosed properties.

You worry again about the decline in your home’s value, as you read the 2.7 percent decline in housing prices in November is the largest monthly decline on record for Atlanta.

And then you remember that for all the hoopla and figures thrown around, you hear or read little about plans to address the housing crisis. Yet, you know this is where it all began.

And then you get a call from the Conference Board and someone wants to ask you some questions about how you’re feeling about things.

Not so good, you tell them. Not so good.

toliver@ajc.com