Doing My Part

It's been a while. For which I apologize. I really did not plan on posting until June 7th but who knows, maybe I will squeeze a few more in before then.

A lot of hot air has been wasted regarding the expected stimulus checks millions of Americans are waiting on. Depending on the last two digits of your social security number, its quite possible you've gotten it back already. The last two of mine are 41 and my rebate cleared on Friday or Saturday of last weekend. Not sure of the exact day since I spent the weekend more or less in a drunken haze.

However, the key is that I did spend which is why I figured I would take a moment and break down where my stimulus money ended up. First, let me go on record - I think this stimulus plan is completely asinine to begin with and will do close to nothing to help our economy. A one time cash flow that amounts to little more than an extra week's pay for an average American is not going to do anything to solve what really troubles the economy ($130 oil, hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgage related writedowns by banks all over the country, an astonishingly weak dollar, 5%+ inflation, etc, etc...) Despite all this, I decided to play along and do my part. After all, I am a Patriot.

The government's disbursement plan coincided beautifully with a last minute trip to DC so it was not too tough to find ways to spend my money. For starters, I booked $180 round trip ticket on Southwest to get down there. The airlines (aside from Southwest) are struggling with higher fuel costs (its called hedging fucksticks) so what hell, I felt honored to give the industry a little boost. Once down there, I took in a Nationals game at their brand new park. Beautiful stadium. While I spent nothing on the ticket, I did buy about 3 dozen draft beers and some related ballpark food which came out to a cool hundo. I capped the weekend off with a dinner which included several orders of buffalo wings and another 3 dozen draft beers bringing the 2-day total to around 4 bills.

I took the other 2 hundred and dumped it in to my ING Orange fund so it could yield about 2.5% over the next 12 months. It also brings ING's capital up so they can make more shitty decisions on CMO's and other asset backed securities thus injecting some much needed liquidity into the market.

Like I said, I'm a Patriot.