I'm curious about how people plan to spend their economic stimulus check. Of course, I'm ignoring the larger question of whether this is good policy or not...

My plan is to put half towards energy efficiency improvements on my home and the other half on my mortgage.

Your thoughts?

As our economy continues to stumble, the housing crisis deepens and our national debt skyrockets the government has decided to try to sweep it all under the rug. The Bush Administration will shut down the popular economicindicators.gov on March 1 because of "budgetary constraints."

The site, administered by the Economics and Statistics Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce, is widely used by academics, economists and reporters. It is invaluable towards an informed public understanding of the state of our economy. It links data from a wide variety of Government agencies such as the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis to allow easy access to government data. One great feature of the site is email notification when selected agencies or departments issue new reports.

Here's an animated video that explains how money works. There is a short section on Hour based money systems and on interest free money. Interesting ideas about how an interest-free government issued "value" money could work. "Setting up a local barter money system, even if little used now, would be prudent emergency planning for any community." - Narator

One of the best part of this video is the quotes from bankers and politicians.

Here's a quote from Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence..

Our annual Holiday Trade Fair ended up going pretty well.

It was an interesting version of this event.

We were a little sad to see the first serious snow of the season that morning. A number of vendors that had sign-ed up never showed up so it felt a little empty at the High Noon when the doors opened at 11 am. Over the course of the fair more vendors did show up but it never felt full. By noon there was a steady stream of customers.

Even though it was smaller, we signed up quite a few new members and a number of people renewed their membership. It works great to sign-up or renew at the fair because then you instantly have extra money to use at the fair. We bought some delicious chocolates from Josie Pradella and some pickles, salsa, horseradish sauce and garlic sauce from Rob McClure. I picked up Art Paul Schlosser's recent tribute CD. We also got something from Forest (Arttogo) but I won't say what because it is a gift.