Tiger Woods: THE American Stimulus Package

Sure, the Federal Reserve Bank has added trillions of dollars to its balance sheet to backstop financial institutions that made insane leverage of their money, bad loans to uninformed consumers, and terrible use of unregulated financial instruments with the unrealistic expectation that housing prices will always rise.

Yeah, President Obama signed a nearly $800 billion stimulus package last week that critics say is just an omnibus spending bill for years' worth of pet Democratic projects.  The Obama administration says that the legislation and money will save about 4 million jobs, depending on the day.

Oh, and lest we forget the $700 billion in TARP money that has been used to this point to make sure every American has their fair share of a dumb investment in failing banks.

In other words, the government's attempts to stimulate the economy have not worked yet.  They may have prevented a more speedy decline, or a total meltdown, but things have not gotten much better.

That all changed yesterday when Tiger Woods announced on his website that he will be making his return to competitive golf next week at the Accenture Match Play Championship.  Tiger Woods will single-handedly stimulate the American economy.  Don't believe me?

Consider the impact that Woods has on the economy. 

He is the most recognizable athlete in the world.  There is a reason that Nike pays him so much money each year to play their clubs, balls, and wear their apparel.  People buy Nike stuff to be like Tiger.

Tiger is sponsored by Gatorade, who is running a campaign to try to re-brand itself as just the letter G.  They are going to spend money on promotional materials trying to get people to remember that Tiger had his own Gatorade flavors and is still a proud drinker of Gatorade.

Buick got rid of Tiger because they had to under federal pressure.  Reports are coming in that AT&T will bring Woods to the table.  It's not enough that they have exclusive rights to the iPhone.  Now they may have exclusive rights to the greatest athlete in the world.  Thank God for Verizon that they have the "network."  All Sprint/Nextel has is walkie talkies.

Golf ratings are totally in the toilet without Woods, usually down between a quarter and a half of the ratings when Woods is in the field.  That means more people will be watching golf on TV.  That means more companies will buy ad time for the telecasts and pay more to do so.  Hopefully it will also mean that I stop seeing commericals for erectile dysfunction pills.  I don't need low-dose 36 hour Cialis.  Who would want to have that kind of ticking time bomb in their loins?

People will go to PGA Tour events in which Woods play in droves.  This knee injury was the sobering news that Woods will one day stop playing golf.  And, if you believe what Woods has said in the past, there's a fat chance that he'll be making appearances at your local Champions Tour stop.  He will have billions of dollars to spend, a Foundation to run, and probably golf courses to build in the next great city to apppear out of nowhere (Dubai).

I don't know that you can put a pricetag on the economic impact that Woods has.  It probably doesn't measure even close to the trillions that we have already invested, knowingly or unwillingly.  Still, this is a stimulus plan that I know will work.  That, and MagicJack.