During a Labor Day speech in Wisconsin, President Obama called for an additional stimulus package of $50 billion for roads, railways and runways.

"Over the next six years, we are going to rebuild 150,000 miles of our roads - enough to circle the world six times," Obama said during the speech. "We're going to lay and maintain 4,000 miles of our railways - enough to stretch coast-to-coast."

Of course, this is if the package passes Congress. According to the CBS Evening News, "None of the economic incentives he's proposing this week is likely to make it through Congress by Election Day."

Others agree the package might be effective in creating jobs, but it won't create jobs soon enough for the mid-term elections in November.

To garner support from Republicans, the Obama administration says the plan will not increase the budget deficit. The Washington Post reported this weekend that "the administration would raise taxes on oil and gas companies" to pay for the proposal. The article adds that "in addition to his infrastructure plan, Obama will lay out on Wednesday two new tax breaks for business: a permanent extension of the research tax credit worth $100 billion over 10 years, and a plan to let companies write off 100 percent of their new investment in plant and equipment this year and next."

Global Financial Policy to Take Shape This Month

On the financial policy front, global financial regulators are scheduling a series of meetings this month in Washington, D.C., and Basel, Switzerland, to begin to fuse new U.S. and international rules governing the financial world in the coming decades.

In Washington, federal regulators will begin to lay the groundwork for how to define "systemic risk" and determine what "too big to fail" really means, even though Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke expects the marketplace likely will take care of the "too big to fail" problem.

In his appearance Thursday before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Bernanke said, "Over time we're going to see some breakups and some reduction in size and complexity as they [banks] respond to market incentives and regulatory pressures as well."

In Basel, international regulators are focused on striking a deal on new capital standards -- known as Basel III -- that will affect the world's largest banks and financial institutions.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "Germany's 10 largest banks may need as much as $135 billion in total extra capital under new international regulatory standards."

Regulators are bumping up the amount of capital that banks need to hold to ensure that lenders have an assortment of backstops they can use in the event of a downturn.