Friday, July 11, 2008

My Stimulus Check Finally Came In the Mail

I am one of those people who file their income taxes on the last possible day. So it stands to reason, so I thought, that my promised stimulus check was going to be among the last ones mailed.

And I was not wrong. Comes in the news today that the last stimulus checks of Bush’s economic brainchild were being mailed out today. So yes, my stimulus check, which came in the mail yesterday, was one of the last ones they sent.

What are people doing with their checks? That’s in the news, too. Retail sales, it seems, are up. Where are they most up? Who is the greatest beneficiary of Bush’s moment of genius?

WalMart.

WalMart is reporting an increase in retail sales.

“Wal-Mart Stores Inc. led the retailing pack, reporting a sales increase of 5.8 percent among stores open at least a year, the key comparison known as same-store sales. Broken down by division, Sam's Club saw a 4.6 percent hike, while sales at Wal-Mart stores shot up 6.1 percent.”
Well now, that makes sense. Where better go to stretch your stimulus dollar than to buy cheap Chinese imports at WalMart?

So incredibly, the main beneficiary of Bush’s $168 billion increase of the national debt is WalMart (WMT) whose stock has been rising, since January.

And by proxy, the other beneficiary is the Peoples Republic of China, the country whose people manufacture the grand majority of what WalMart puts on its shelves.

Now I object. I must object most strenuously. I thought I had a uniquely fashioned and very cool irony that I was going to carry out. No, I wasn’t going to invest my stimulus check in the stock market. Nor was I going to put it in a long-term high yield CD. I was going to squander it on a nice digital camera with killer optics, preferably made in China.

But it seems that millions of people have beat me to the punch.

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