Two Big Numbers

Consider the following numbers: $300 billion and $700 billion. Those are the approximate sizes of the US federal government budget deficit and the US annual trade deficit with the rest of the world, respectively. The total is $1 trillion annually, a number that represents approximately the amount that the US must borrow each year from the rest of the world to finance our deficits.
To say that the US is spending more than it produces is to state the obvious. To say that the US needs to reign in its spending and increase its savings is also to state the obvious. Yet, a look at current monetary and fiscal policies makes one wonder what the government and the Fed are thinking. The Fed is feverishly lowering interest rates to stimulate spending while the Federal Government has already passed a tax rebate to help people spend more as spring approaches. Of course, the reason for these moves is to presumably forestall a recession or help us to get out of one that we may already be in.
Given that consumers will not get checks until May and given that Fed policy takes 6-8 months to have any real effect, the question has to be: why are we doing this? Why is the Federal Government spending money it doesn't have and why is the Fed lowering interest rates only to set us up for the next bubble that it will create (recall the tech stock boom of the late 1990s and the housing boom most recently-both Fed caused)? The recession/slow growth will end by June/July at the latest and the economy will start to recover, regardless of the stimulus packages that the government and the Fed have concocted. Are we going back to the days of stop/start economic policies that we experienced in the 1970s/1980s? We can hope we are not, but it is beginning to look as if this is the case.