No waiting for your notice from the IRS about when the check will come. No checking one’s Social Security number against the payout timetable. No waiting for that direct deposit or check in the mail.

No, in Iraq the dinars are going straight from the prime minister’s pocket into your hands. In an effort to jump-start the economy, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a few other top officials have formed a money train through the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere. The max payout allowed is about $8,000. More from the Associated Press:

“Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security.


The cash handouts are just one small — if eye-catching — part of a major investment push this summer by Iraq’s government. The aim is to rebuild basic services and jumpstart Iraq’s damaged economy by quickly distributing as much of the country’s glut of oil revenue as possible.


U.S. officials and a fed-up American public are urging exactly that — for Iraq to spend its own money, not America’s, to rebuild the country now that violence has eased.


Yet the Iraqi effort runs a high risk of failure: The government is disorganized, fears of favoritism remain and the shadow of corruption haunts every step.


‘Money is not a problem,’ al-Maliki told a recent gathering of tribal chiefs in the southern city of Basra, after government forces had defeated Shiite extremists there. ‘But we must put it in honest hands to spend.’


Despite such problems, Iraq’s oil revenues, an estimated $70 billion this year, still provide the best chance of leveraging the country’s fragile period of calm into something more lasting, many officials say.”