By Peter Schiff

For members of Congress desperate to avoid recession, the takeaway message that Fed Chairman Bernanke delivered in his testimony this week was that a successful stimulus package needs to be rapid and targeted. By this he meant that money would need to be delivered quickly to those individuals who would be most likely to spend, and withdrawn when and if the need for stimulus ebbs.

For those who believe that this strategy is prudent and effective, the debate now becomes choosing the most effective technique to deliver the cash. Proposals include middle class tax cuts or rebates, extension of unemployment benefits and expansion of funding for public works. However, for those who want to engineer spending, the problem with these ideas is that the people who receive the funds may not decide to spend it immediately, if at all. They may, god forbid, elect to pay down existing debt or most perniciously, actually save it instead.

Fortunately, the government has very modern and effective tools available to deliver funds and micromanage spending. Just recently, the Treasury Department launched a program to streamline Social Security payments through the use of debit cards. The same idea could be used for fiscal stimulus. The Government could distribute millions of “Economic Stimulus Cards” to citizens, which could function more like retailer gift cards rather than debit or credit cards. Here’s how they would work:
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Submitted by cpowell on Fri, 2008-01-18 21:46. Section: Daily Dispatches
1:45p PT Friday, January 18, 2008

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

This month GATA will place a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal calling attention to the international central bank scheme to suppress the price of gold and to GATA’s conference in Washington in April.

The ad was devised with great care by GATA’s Board of Directors over the last several weeks and The Wall Street Journal today confirmed to GATA that it will publish the ad as submitted. In the belief that this ad can strike a profound blow against the rigging of the gold market and all related markets, GATA has cobbled together assets valued at the more than quarter-million dollars to be charged by the newspaper for printing the ad and expects to convert them to U.S. dollars and make payment to the newspaper next week.

You can see the advertisement here:

http://www.gata.org/files/GATA-AD-01-14-2008.pdf

Please distribute the ad to anyone who might be interested in it.

GATA is not asking for contributions to underwrite the ad particularly. But if you approve of GATA’s work generally (and would like to help us get our children back), you can learn how to support GATA financially here:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.