The half-trillion-dollar stimulus package that China unveiled on Sunday underscores that country’s growing importance to the global economy and shows Beijing’s willingness to assume a leadership role in the battle to blunt a widening worldwide financial crisis, a top expert on China said yesterday (Monday).

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China unveiled yesterday (Sunday) what it described as a “massive” economic stimulus package – a planned capital infusion of $586 billion that it plans to use to reverse its slowing growth, to loosen credit and to offset slowing global growth by stoking domestic demand.

The revised 1Q GDP figures to be released next week, will likely support the sense of optimism that pervades the market, according to a report by MarketWatch.

Economists expect the gross domestic product to be revised up to 0.9% in the first quarter, from the initial estimate of 0.6% when the government releases the data on Thursday morning.

Actions taken by the Federal Reserve to calm financial markets and ease the housing crisis are working, a US government official claims.

“Markets appear to be gaining confidence and the availability of credit has improved modestly,” Clay Lowery, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for international affairs, told Bloomberg. More from that story:

The Fed’s interest-rate cuts and a government economic stimulus package have helped to ease market turmoil and support consumer spending, [Lowery] said.

US Government spending is at record highs, fueled in part by the costs of President Bush’s so-called economic ’stimulus’ package.

Reuters reports that US Treasury spending and revenue reached fresh highs in April.

US government posted a $US159.3 billion surplus in April, helped by the mid-month deadline for individuals meeting 2007 tax obligations, but it was down from the prior year’s surplus, the Treasury Department reported on Monday.

“Where is my stimulus check?” continues to be one of the most searched for phrases on Google, despite US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s recent assurances that the government will have send out almost $50 worth of economic stimulus checks by the end of the month.

This from Forbes.com:

The first $7 bln of economic stimulus payments went out by electronic deposit last week to 7.7 mln people, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Thursday. The average payment was $920.

Almost $50 bln will have been sent out by the end of this month and another $50 bln by early July to a total of about 130 mln households, he said after touring a plant printing stimulus checks in Kansas City.

For American tax payers…

‘Where is my stimulus check?’ has become one of the hottest trends on the Google internet search engine, indicating that many Americans have not yet received their tax rebate check, a major part of the Bush administration’s economic ’stimulus’ package.

As thousands of Americans turn to the internet to find out where their stimulus check has got to, the mainstream press has started to crank out hundreds of “How to spend your stimulus check” filler articles. Like this piece form The Washington Post urging hard-pressed Americans to donate their rebate checks to charitable organizations supporting “our troops and their families.”

Commander in Chief of the ailing US economy says there’s help on the way for Americans in the form of federal stimulus checks, which have been sent out in the mail today.

The headline-grabbing refund checks, part of an economic stimulus package passed in February, will go to roughly 130 million US households and will range in value from $300 to $1,200.

President Bush insisted yesterday that the US is not recession-bound and rejected for now any additional stimulus efforts.