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Ever wonder why the terrorists have not attacked us. Maybe because Bush & Co. gave them what they wanted - US troops out of Saudi Arabia and an endless terrorist recruiting effort in Iran and Afghanistan. The Bushistas caved to everything Al Quida and the Saudi's wanted. What did we expect from an amoral coward?
As much as I detest BushII, a never-elected war criminal, to lay ALL the blame for our current depression on him is not to understand the process, which began in 1973.
At that time we lowered our tariffs to meaningless levels, and the industrial jobs (our true single export) rolled out. At the time, Nat Geo was running a feature on the Great Lakes region and said the obvious: "The decline in American manufacturing today is precisely as steep as was its rise post-WWII."
And of course, it is industrial strength, not trade, which determines a country's wealth.
Since then, we've reverted back to the severe boom-bust cycle we saw from 1880-1929.
We tried to go with a lower-wage Service Economy; we were told by "experts" to "diversify."
Yet, even if we did as they said everytime the major industrial employer of an area went belly-up because it could not compete with foreign firms paying far less (1.00/hr for Mexico; 16 cents per hour for China. Even Japanese automakers make only 80% of their few remaining US counterparts. In Korea $5.00 in a car factory is top pay.) the region died, diversification, or not.
And now we have the current depression, which the talking heads say is only a "steep recession". and point to the unemployment levels as proof. Yet they conviently forget (not in their financial interest) to report that under Carter, and 1st implimented under Reagan, the way unemployment is counted was changed, so that the reported rate is approx. 50% of the real rate, now called the "Misery Index" by BLS, and rarely reported.
Then there's the second lie: that this was caused solely by a failure in the real estate market and financials.
This also is seen through the prism of political expediency.
The fact is that since we lost our economy in '73 we've tried to power-through by various booms that we knew HAD to be temporary by their very nature.
First there was Reagan's jobs program, called the Defense Build-up.
Then there was the S&L scam.
Under Clinton we started the Dot.Com bubble and the Housing Bubble. This continued with a desperate vengence under BushII, and was the ONLY sector of the economy to emerge from the 2000 Recession.
Yet, through it all, most Americans continued to slide downward into working poverty. This was first noted by Nebraska U. economist Wallace Peterson, who labeled the process "The Silent Depression" back in 1991 (and it's not so silent now, is it?).
Then in 1995, an SMU economist, Dr. Ravi Batra, showed his collegues that the impossible had happened: for the first time, real wages (the only source of dollars for 80% of Americans, vs the widely reported, more optimistic "average income") had fallen (to that point by 25%). He tied this unprecedented event to the other unprecedented event in our current affairs:
Our conversion from a protectionist economy to one of free trade.
And now we've reached bottom. Granted the last 8 years with its unsucerssful oil war, and Cooledge-style transfer of resources Up the social ladder hurried on our demise, but as can be clearly shown, our problems run far deeper than the media and our corporately-sponsored leaders are telling us.
Exactly!
People claim the housing market and credit are the causes of the down turn of our economy but fail to address the reason why people in our country rely on credit and the housing market (wages not keeping up with inflation).
People treated credit and unsustainable rises in home prices as wealth and in the case of home prices as a source of income(equity) to offest the decline in real wages.
Premature to refer to it as a "depression." Those who lived through the actual depression of the '30s would love to live in today's economy!
War criminal?? How about using false intelligence to get us into an unecessary war, to invade another sovereign nation that did not attack us, and for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, not to mention over 4,500 US military...
As for the Dubya Depression - no - we are not formally in a depression. But we DID come perilously close to one - especially after Lehman Brothers went belly up last fall... This is the first time in my lifetime that economists are using the word depression with credibility when then talking about the possible trajectory the economy could take...
War criminal?? How about using false intelligence to get us into an unecessary war, to invade another sovereign nation that did not attack us, and for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, not to mention over 4,500 US military...
As for the Dubya Depression - no - we are not formally in a depression. But we DID come perilously close to one - especially after Lehman Brothers went belly up last fall... This is the first time in my lifetime that economists are using the word depression with credibility when then talking about the possible trajectory the economy could take...
The fact that we've avoided a depression is due to the quick and decisive action of the Obama administration...
We are not out of the woods yet - but looks like this recession may be bottoming out - and we may be experiencing the worst of it now...
War criminal?? How about using false intelligence to get us into an unecessary war, to invade another sovereign nation that did not attack us, and for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, not to mention over 4,500 US military...
How about posting actual facts instead of leftist nonsense?
One reason the intelligence was "false" (even though many Democrats were making the exacts same claim as Bush, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore) was because of how Clinton changed the way the CIA could obtain intelligence from informants.
Actually, he was elected. He won 271 electoral votes; 270 was required to win.
Exactly how is he a "war criminal?"
Premature to refer to it as a "depression." Those who lived through the actual depression of the '30s would love to live in today's economy!
Are you asking yourself a rhetorical question? Bush/Cheney told the American Public we were going to war to stop Saddam from obtaining Nuclear weapon....We were sold a bunch of horse shi&t and you know it. People need to quit defending the indefensible..
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