Everyone seems to agree that the United States needs an economic stimulus package. But does it make sense to re-stimulate the same economic thinking that got us into this mess? 

The signs of demise are flashing big time. Sometime this year, mortgages totaling $400 billion for commercial properties are up and need to be refinanced, and banks are already balking. Like the subprime mess, commercial mortgages were diced and spliced and sold all over the world. 73,000 stores are closing in the next six months, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Auto sales are not estimated to even approach so-called normal levels again until 2012 at the earliest. 

Banks and others are now doing what John Maynard Keynes said they would do in these dire circumstances: they are hoarding cash. Even though Congressional watchdogs have been screaming for weeks that banks are sitting on the money we, the taxpayers, gave them this fall, there's no indication that the hoarding's going to stop. After all, why should it. The banks are looking at the same data as the rest of us. Numbers that Nobel Prize winning economic Paul Krugman this week called "terrifying."

President Elect Barack Obama's economic plan calls on Congress to throw more money into private hands -- in the form of tax incentives to private businesses with the hope that they'll invest in factories and workers.

But why would they? They have as much reason to hoard and as little reason to spend as the banks. Those businesses that are still in business, that is. The alternative Franklin Roosevelt embraced was putting money into public works under government contracts. Trying to nip anything like that in the bud, the same conservatives who spent us into trillions of dollars of debt for war, are already biting at Barack Obama's heels--and he's already making promises not to grow government. Huh? 

The public is bad, private is good mantra is what got us into this mess. Does it make sense to start out with the same mindset that's done so much harm to so many? Or isn't it time for what candidate Obama promised -- namely something else?