Pretty soon you're talking real panic

Barack Obama's "stimulus" plan now includes, "advisers said", $300 billion in tax cuts because he seemed too focused on making government bigger to help the economy. Which means it's not really a "plan" because sudden kluges on this scale would undermine its structural integrity if it had any. But as long as politicians keep hurling hundreds of billions of dollars about in a weirdly self-satisfied panic, market participants are unlikely to recover their confidence. Would you?