Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Just to review what's going on, we have a two-pronged attack, if you will, from the federal government. One is from the Federal Reserve. They have pushed interest rates down to historic lows. They're also creating - simply printing - a lot of money. Secondly, is from the president and the Congress together. They are planning a large new, so-called stimulus spending plan where they will be spending almost $1 trillion at the federal level. Now, there will be some costs to both of these efforts. The cost to the Federal Reserve in terms of printing money is it may spark - down the road, not immediately but down the road - higher inflation. The cost from the federal government spending so much additional money is they will have to borrow that money; therefore they will have a higher national debt, higher interest payments on that national debt. That will mean in the future, we'll either have to cut back on other federal spending or raise taxes. Now the reason the federal government is doing this is simply because they think this recession is so dire, so deep, that they're willing to incur these costs - indeed, the economy is willing to incur these costs in the future - in order to prop up the economy now."