Cash for Clunkers Ends Monday
The national frenzy that is Cash for Clunkers will end Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, according to the government’s CARS website. “It’s been a thrill to be part of the best economic news story in America,” Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood enthuses in a press release (PDF). “Now we are working toward an orderly wind down of this very popular program.” Though LaHood is able to put a happy face on the program (it’s what he gets paid to do), evidence suggests that there are still a number of headaches to work through.
For example, according to the CARS wind-down strategy (PDF), the DOT has only approved $140 million so far out of almost $2 billion in applications. The CARS staff has also tripled in the last “few days,” in order to handle the volume of applications, and there are now 1,100 public and private employees reviewing CARS applications. And it’s still possible that America will cash in over a billion worth of clunkers between now and Monday. In which case . . . actually, nobody knows what would happen. At this point, the DOT still has $1.8 bil of the first $2 bil worth of applications to go through. Whether the program ends up over or under budget is probably a secondary concern to simply processing everything at this point.
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I put together some good resources, if you're interested in the Cash for Clunkers program. http://www.autostimulusplan.org I gathered a list of Pros and Cons for the individual (4-Pro, 6-Con), and Pros and Cons for the Collective Soul (6-Pro, 12-Con). After the results are in, I'd like to post the statistics to show benefits vs. consequences.
ok, whutever i aint arguing or trying to convince you anymore i'd recommend you save this webpage, file/save as, for future evidence. i predict march '10 some more shakedowns for the US (edit: market will drop heavily again), after 2 years you will see some hints of CHANGE but not what you expected (edit: jobs arent getting back, ppl are getting more depressed and everything that accompanies that), while in 5 years you'll be living in a completely upside-down world (edit: another big conflict/war or substantially higher taxes, oil at $10/gallon). and you WILL remember my words. so long