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Sat Aug 9 15:20:32 EDT 2008
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Published on Friday, August 8, 2008 by CommonDreams.org <http://www.commondreams.org>
The Fire This Time?
by David Michael Green
Any American who’s been on the planet for more than a few years has lived through a series of economic ups and downs — what economists call the business cycle. These booms and busts seem to follow one another as inevitably as sunset does sunrise.
Phil Gramm hasn’t apparently noticed, but we’re now pretty deep into an economic downturn — whether or not it officially qualifies as a recession yet or is simply on the way to becoming one.
But two things are especially striking about this particular iteration of our economic malaise. One is that we never quite seem to have had the boom we were supposed to get in between this bust and the last one. Gross domestic product, the key single indicator of economic health used to measure the state of the economy, has done reasonably well since the downturn that began in 2000. So has the stock market, and so, especially, have the one percent or so of the richest Americans, who have lately transitioned from being ridiculously rich to obscenely rich.
Most of the rest of us, on the other hand, may be excused for wondering when the good times hit, ‘cause we somehow missed it. It’s funny (hah-hah, right?), but in the go-go late 1990s, some economists were wondering whether Alan “The Second Coming” Greenspan and Robert “Token Wall Street Pseudo-Democrat” Rubin hadn’t actually killed the business cycle forever, with only good times to come for generations on end. Ironically, the subsequent decade may be considered to have posed the same question, only with a very different meaning. Given the absence of any serious recovery content in the latest alleged recovery, maybe the business cycle is dead — only not with permanent boom, but permanent bust, instead.
In truth, though, we may come to look upon years like 2004 or 2005 as the good ol’ days. That’s because the second unique thing about the present downturn is the depth of down to which we may now be turning. I’m sure somebody was relieved when George Bush recently informed the country that the economic fundamentals are solid, but it sure wasn’t me. Hard as it is to imagine that this president could get something wrong or speak, uh, somewhat less than candidly, my fear is that conditions are quite the opposite of those the cheerleader-in-chief portrayed. I remember well the recessions of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. This one doesn’t feel anything like those. It seems a lot bigger. My fear is that the bottom may be falling out. My fear is that it’s the fire this time.
I’m not an economist (not that economists so very often know what the hell they’re talking about either), so I will readily admit that I don’t have a lot of expertise on this question. But I will say one thing with confidence, however, even as a economics dilettante (in political science we call those people ‘angry voters’). And that is that there are incredible signs of economic thin ice almost anywhere you turn today. The national debt has never been higher. Consumer debt has never been higher. Savings have never been lower. The trade deficit has never been higher. The dollar is spectacularly weak. Foreclosures are mushrooming. Quality jobs are disappearing in droves. People are working longer to maintain the same standard of living, or often less. Employers are economizing, among other ways, by cutting healthcare benefits. Real estate values are plummeting. Sure, it’s a great time to be a bankruptcy lawyer or a repo man, but probably most of us would agree that keeping people in those two fields well employed isn’t worth the trade-off of having an economy in the toilet.
George Bush has laughingly admitted that he got “gentlemen’s C’s” when he was in college (those are what the rest of us, whose daddies don’t endow library wings at Ivy League schools, refer to as F’s ), so perhaps that explains his misreading of the economy. For us folks not laughing quite so hard at his little riff out of the “Humor for Plutocrats” textbook, the real question, given the above-referenced indicators, is what in the world would it take for the Boy Wonder to finally say that the fundamentals of the economy are not sound? Does China have to start actually mailing him a monthly rental invoice for use of the White House? Does real estate have to lose fully half its value, rather than ‘merely’ 25 percent? Does the dollar need to become even more worthless than the 1930s Deutschmark for him to be concerned (”Get your wheelbarrows while they’re hot, ladies and gentlemen, right over here!”)? Or must low-hanging billionaires have to painfully downscale their lifestyles into those of impoverished multi-millionaires before he could perceive the hurt?
You wanna talk fundamentals, George? Let’s talk about some really fundamental fundamentals. And, no, I don’t mean yields-per-acre, pork belly futures or worker-productivity-to-energy-input ratios, dude.
There’s no question that America has historically been an industrious, innovative and hard-working country. We still are today, though the hard-working part has gotten simultaneously more hard, less rewarding, and less driven by desire for advancement than need for survival. Perhaps the paradigmatic moment of our time was Clueless George on the campaign trail in 2004, gushing over a woman he met who said she worked three jobs to keep afloat. For Bush, it was an ‘only in America’ moment - completely oblivious, as he seemed to be, that this represents almost nobody’s vision of the good life. Well, almost nobody. One imagines that Dick Cheney was smiling in the wings of that event, thinking to himself: “Once we get all of them doing that, our work here will be done!”. Nowadays, no industrialized country in the world has workers who put in more hours per year than the US. None has such a glaring absence of economic support programs as America does, either.
But we’ve worked hard here, historically, like the good Protestants we are, and we’ve been technologically innovative and admirably determined in achieving our far-reaching aspirations. That’s all good stuff, but just the same, though, there’s been an undeniable dark side to the phenomenal success of the American economy. We’ve worked hard to produce a lot, true, but we’ve also — in a word — stolen a lot as well.
We stole from indentured servants from the beginning. We stole from Native Americans within minutes of landing here, and never stopped until we’d grabbed all the land and resources we wanted, leaving them casinos and poverty in return. We harnessed yokes around Africans and imported them as if they were agricultural beasts of burden, and continued to do so for centuries. We built our economic accomplishments on the backs of near-slave immigrant laborers, from Chinese coolies to Mexican wetbacks, along with Irish, Italian, German, Jewish and a whole lot of other nationalities in-between. We stole fully half of Mexico following a trumped-up war no less bogus than the current one in Iraq, then we did the same for Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines and more. We broke the backs of labor movements in order to enrich a few owners while grinding ‘human resources’ into impoverishment and early death. We exploited the entire continent-and-a-half of Latin America, installing local dictators in country after country who got personally wealthy by doing the oppressive and murderous dirty work for American resource extraction corporations. We assigned to women endless domestic chores without the slightest compensation, nor political power, nor even ownership of family wealth.
These are the obvious thefts — and there is no more accurate word for it — by which we’ve massively enhanced our wealth over a period of centuries. But there are less obvious ones as well. We have raped the environment for precisely the same purposes. You can get a lot wealthier a lot faster by not concerning yourself (or even paying compensation for) the environmental destruction caused by manufacturing, mining, drilling and more, than you would by having to be responsible for those very real costs of your enterprise. Economists like to gently refer to such factors as ‘externalities.’ That’s a polite way to describe a process by which the rich get even richer through offloading the costs of their business to you and me, and keeping the profits for themselves.
Not content with any of that, however, we’ve also lately been engaged in other, new and improved, more subtle forms of national wealth theft. Rampant consumerism based on little plastic cards is quite effective, leaving costs to others, like our children. So is — as exhausted consumerism now heads for the ditch — turning our houses into piggy banks to keep an economy artificially afloat, until that can no longer be sustained either. Or running incredible trade deficits, or radically deflating the value of our currency to keep sales of American goods abroad halfway viable. Another nice trick you can do is run up the national debt and leave that to your kids as well. You can also ignore your infrastructural repair and development needs so people can party on now, instead of paying the taxes necessary to keep the economy strong for the next generation. Talk about eating your young. One of the best of all these games over last decades has been the uninhibited agenda of economic globalization which has now managed to successfully export American white collar jobs to India, right behind the blue collar ones that previously went to China. That was supposed to make us all richer, remember? Some people indeed are. Those without jobs, or working for half what they used to make, aren’t in that small group however.
What all of these ploys have in common is that they are all methods allowing one to live larger than we’re rightfully entitled to. Slavery is the most obvious example. You wanna live the good life? The most basic formula ain’t that hard to figure out. Kidnap some dude from a less technologically developed part of the world, terrorize him with overwhelming force and psychological violence to go along with the real kind, then watch as he plows your field while you sit on the porch sipping Mint Juleps. Then, repeat. This is the most obvious example, yes, but really no different in principle from ripping off your own kids with tax ‘cuts’ unaccompanied by spending cuts, which drive up the national debt and hand the next generation the bill. Plus interest. Or stealing in the form of externalizing costs for remediating environmental destruction while the eco-evildoers go off scot-free with grossly inflated profits (indeed, in some cases, these would be non-existent profits, were the real costs to have been factored in). And so on, and so on.
The work of Reaganism-Bushism is nowadays finally beginning to be recognized for what it is. Americans have not felt such economic insecurity since the Great Depression. Whether the epiphany will come in time for them to finally recognize and give leave to the kind folks who dismantled the Good Times of previous generations, is unclear. A very possible scenario is that McCain barely wins in November — on the strength of fear, racism and the usual Rovian smear tactics — literally just months before economic anxiety finally crests over into newfound consciousness and rage. That would feel like a giant version of 2005, when Americans were frightened into re-electing the Little Tyrant, and almost immediately began to regret their choice. This was truly another paradigmatic moment, as Bush did his usual blustering performance, bragging about his mandate and the political capital he now planned to start spending. As he quickly found out when he tried to rip-off the Social Security system, and as his job approval ratings continued to sink until just about nobody other than a few crackers in the Texas Hill Country still thought he was doing a good job, the only mandate he had actually garnered was to be someone other than the cartoon caricature of a would-be president that Rove had turned John Kerry into (with the latter’s ample assistance).
If McCain once again drags the spent and stinking carcass of kleptocratic robber baron public policy across the finish line in November, while the economy continues to deteriorate, he’ll have only two choices on coming to office. One would be to abandon his party once and for all in a sort of reverse version of the U-turn François Mitterrand famously executed, moving from socialism to mixed economy capitalism during the 1980s. McCain might actually relish that notion. He probably hates the crap he’s had to take from the bastards who rule his party nearly as much as the rest of us do. Plus he may know he’s a one-term president no matter what, so what’s he got to lose? And we know that he admires Teddy Roosevelt most of all the former presidents, and such a move would be right out of TR’s playbook.
His other choice would be to continue to hew closely to right-wing orthodoxy while the ground disintegrates below our feet. This would surely please Grover Norquist and all the billionaires whose massive earnings are maybe off by ten percent lately (boo-hoo, fellas), but if he did this my guess is that the rest of the country might well turn on him with some caged-animal ferocity raging behind bared teeth. For reasons which still entirely elude me (though which nowadays probably have a lot to do with simply waiting it all out), the public massively disapproves of the Bush administration, but does nothing about it. My gut tells me, however, that having their hopes quashed once again as things get worse, and the guy they’ve just reluctantly chosen president continues the same destructive policies of doing nothing but making the rich richer, is a bridge too far. At the risk of mixing metaphors, I wouldn’t want to be John McCain on the day that particular dam breaks.
But the bigger point is simply this. Americans historically did well by working hard, educating themselves and bringing clever innovation to the table. But for just as long they got really rich by stealing the extra wealth, whether from someone else’s labor, from their neighbors, from the environment in which we live, or from the future.
What if there are no more piggy banks from which to steal? What happens if the US economy has finally hit the wall of remorseless reality, and can only produce what it can honestly produce? What happens to the American economy and American standards of living if all the gimmicks have been exhausted?
The fire this time?
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles (dmg at regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.
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59 Comments so far
1.
cavedweller August 8th, 2008 1:46 pm
When things get bad enough and the oppressed finally have nothing more to lose, then they will rise against their oppressors and throw off the yoke of enslavement. The pendulum of justice will begin its arc toward reason and the exploiters will be trampled into the dust. The time is near.
2.
DaveEriqat <http://daveeriqat.wordpress.com/> August 8th, 2008 1:47 pm
The way “they” keep tinkering with the economic statistics, I wonder if they will ever need to declare another recession! If one uses more trustworthy statistics, such as those found at http://www.shadowstats.com/, we’ve probably been in recession since about the year 2000. Everybody was talking about the so-called jobless recovery after the 2001 “recession.” Well, it was jobless because there really wasn’t a “recovery,” except among the rich. In real terms, salaries for the rest of us have declined since about 2000.
While I’m no fan of the current decider, I think more of the blame falls on his predecessor! It was during Clinton’s term that China was granted most favored nation trade status, which opened the floodgates for the exodus of American manufacturers. It was Clinton who pushed and passed NAFTA, which has helped ruin the economies of both America and Mexico!
Dave
3.
Thomas More August 8th, 2008 1:48 pm
Phil Gramm is an absolute idiot. Being from Texas and having seen him through his whole career I’d like to assure you all that this is one man that could be given an IQ of 299 and somehow manage to make it seem to be 99.
Aside from David Michael Green’s racist cracks and his socialist view of history, his salient points are correct in my opinion.
I believe this recession should have begun at least 3 years ago and by intentionally putting it off, Bush and the boys have made it indeed a very dangerous position.
4.
Samson <http://www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com> August 8th, 2008 1:53 pm
As usual with Mr. Green’s pieces, he tries to blame it all on the Republicans. But in this case, most of the root causes of this downturn stem back to the Democrats.
It was the Bill Clinton era when we signed the trade deals that put the last nail in the coffin of American manufacturing. The corporate bosses that bought off the Clinton’s and did the stay overs in the Lincoln bedroom wanted bigger profits. So the Clinton presidency signed all the trade deals like NAFTA and WTO and trade with China.
The problem is, that was the end of the era where America actually produced anything for sale in the rest of the world. And when we stop making anything the rest of the world wants, we become a creditor nation. Any hope of decreasing our constant trade deficits goes out the window, because we no longer make anything to trade with the rest of the world.
Its taken awhile for this to really take hold, but all that we are seeing today is basically down to the fact that the Clinton’s sold our manufacturing overseas and nowadays we don’t make anything.
On top of that, the bankers were the next group to buy off the Clinton’s and stay overnite in the Lincoln bedroom. So the Clintons got together with their good buddy Phil Graham and passed the bill that removed all the depression era banking reforms. Ie, in the depression they had seen similar problems and they had put into place some key reforms to keep it from happening again. Bill Clinton and Phil Graham got together to gut those. Which led directly to all the abuses we are seeing come home to roost today.
And key Democrats in Congress voted to pass every one of these things. So, there is little doubt that the Democratic Party as a whole, and certainly its leadership supported this. Just like most of them supported the bankers’ Bankruptcy reform bill a few years ago when the bankers saw these problems coming and decided that it was the citizens who should be screwed by this and not them.
And note carefully that the Democrats are doing nothing to stop hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money being given away to prop up private banks and investment firms. Add to that picture all the Wall St money in Obama’s accounts and you know these giveaways will continue after this election.
Which makes way this article tries to blame all of this on “reaganism-bushism’ and the new bogeyman John McCain rather funny. The Democrats are at least as much a part of the problem. Maybe more, because while you expect the Republicans to favor business and bankers, the old system at least had the Democrats as a counter-balance. But now that the Democrats also favor business and bankers over the rest of us, the whole system has gone hay-wire in the last 15 years. Its the change in the role of the Democrats that is the root of the problem.
Thus all the spin and bull from the Dems trying to pin it on the Republicans.
The real answer is to throw all of these bums out.
5.
jakenewton August 8th, 2008 1:54 pm
“If one uses more trustworthy statistics, such as those found at http://www.shadowstats.com/, we’ve probably been in recession since about the year 2000. ”
What is the best reason we should find these statistics to be more trustworthy?
6.
Stephen V. Riley August 8th, 2008 1:56 pm
I guess what David Michael Green is saying is that we will have a collapse of Western capitalism so severe, that it might wake us all up. Or do we bail the corporate thieves out again, and start all over as in the past.
7.
Locke August 8th, 2008 1:57 pm
8.
RichM August 8th, 2008 2:01 pm
Like most essays by Prof Green, this piece is erudite, overly long, & largely amounts to an intelligent man who’s conflicted. In his weaker moments, Green wants to blame the whole rotten mess on Republicans. But in his better moments, he knows perfectly well that this thesis is not tenable, & that the problem goes much deeper than that.
In his “Blame-it-on-Republicans” mode, he says “The work of Reaganism-Bushism is nowadays finally beginning to be recognized for what it is.” Why doesn’t he call it Reaganism-Clintonism-Bushism? It’s ludicrous to assert that Bill Clinton was anything less than a full partner in the last 28 years of plutocratic looting & plundering. And while there’s plenty of savaging of “McCain” in this article, the word “Obama” doesn’t even appear once.
But in his best moment in the piece, down at the bottom, Green asks, “What if there are no more piggy banks from which to steal? What happens if the US economy has finally hit the wall of remorseless reality, and can only produce what it can honestly produce? What happens to the American economy and American standards of living if all the gimmicks have been exhausted?”
- And that, ladies and gentlemen, is indeed what we used to call the $64,000 question.
9.
DaveEriqat <http://daveeriqat.wordpress.com/> August 8th, 2008 2:09 pm
jakenewton: For one thing. subjectively speaking, the CPI reported at shadowstats is much closer to my own observations.
Secondly, shadowstats uses the methodologies used back in the 1980s and 1990s to calculate things like the CPI and unemployment. During the 1980s and 1990s, the official measurements were significantly changed, resulting in lower inflation and unemployment figures. In other words, comparing the statistics of today with those of two or three decades ago is like comparing apples and oranges. Shadowstats uses the same measurements that the government used to use. The guy who runs shadowstats used to be an accountant for the government, as well, so I think he knows what he’s doing.
Dave
10.
Hollow point August 8th, 2008 2:10 pm
so when things get tough the tough get going? The USA is so screwed and so controlled from the Gov to media the people will do screw all but ride the coat tales of others like they have for over a hundred years.
11.
timebiter August 8th, 2008 2:17 pm
Republicans? Democrats? Is there really a difference anymore. They all seem to be beholden to the corporations and the wealthy. Hey Samson, Clinton signed the trade bills, the repubs were in charge of congress. Both are guilty. Don’t forget that the repubs held congress after ‘92 and the contract on America began.
12.
margalo August 8th, 2008 2:21 pm
It is a waste of time to blame the Democrats or the Republicans for the continuous path towards our current misery from Reagan-Bush1-Clinton-Bush2, because those forces behind the scenes which control the elections results only put into office, particularly at the top, the person they believe is their best henchman to achieve their goals, which barely include a few crumbs for the rest of us. In other words, it doesn’t matter which party is in, because they are both on the same team.
Our best hope in the long run, before or after the coming rebellion, is to get ahold of the elections system to assure that it is accurate and unbiased for the first time in a very long time. This means not only a printout but an escrowed copy of the counting program with a neutral third entity, which will then be compared with the counting system used. We must also enforce the new laws, which are NOT being enforced by the Justice Dept. or the states to clean the fraudulent registrations off the lists. There needs to be an overall elections system, not the county by county voter registration system that is never cleaned up. Surely if the states have records and know exactly who is licensed to drive in the state, they can have voter records and know exactly who is registered to vote in the state, without duplications and dead voters. We also must stop having different ballot designs county by county without any oversight. The civil and criminal codes now do not have any penalties for elections officers who commit ballot fraud, so that needs to be added to the codes and enforced, too.
13.
jakenewton August 8th, 2008 2:26 pm
“the CPI reported at shadowstats is much closer to my own observations.”
How formal are your own observations?
“The guy who runs shadowstats used to be an accountant for the government, as well, so I think he knows what he’s doing.”
On his home page he says “The problem lies in biased and often-manipulated government reporting.”
Yet as far as I can see he starts himself with those numbers and then applies his formulas to them. He certainly doesn’t duplicate any of the expensive and extensive survey work that the federal government does regularly.
Also I’ve never heard of anyone respectable toutin Williams’ work. That doesn’t mean anything in itself but he sounds to me like he’s just trying to sell a newsletter.
14.
johnycanuck August 8th, 2008 2:27 pm
I think the the idea must be..”if we go in bigger and bigger circles, faster and faster, they will all think they are big wheels…
..if they ask for a status report, just “inform(t)(c)2000″ them, the giddy, vertigo, rolling in their collective stomach, is simply “acid_reflux (c)2000″, and to “Ask your doctor(c)2000″, about “ID10t-me-up(t)(c)2000″ for instant relief.
(notice: all copyrights and trademarks are the property of “The New World Order(t)(c)1900″,coming to a country near you..stay “tuned(t)(c)”.
15.
PaulK August 8th, 2008 2:28 pm
I believe in a dance between the corporate thieves, the more honest affluent people, and the common citizens. When the citizens got fed up they revolted in umpteen different ways. Then the corporate thieves realized that their own spigot could soon be turned off, and so they backed down and opened the citizens’ spigot a bit.
This dance is hundreds or thousands of years old. In olden days they played for keeps — in a revolution the rich thieves and a few innocents were generally all murdered. In modern times, many industrialists learned to back off long before they had to run for it. We have prominent people like the descendants of John D. Rockefeller doing good works in America, or Bill Gates trying to ameliorate terrible poverty in Africa, or Warren Buffet saying that it’s only fair to tax the estates of billionaires.
In modern times unions will occasionally go on strike just to take the rotten-hearted company down with them. Periodically poor people burn down their ghettos which are owned by outside slumlords and a few innocents. Some pressure is taken off of the pot lid by voting, although clamping the pot lid down by inside vote-rigging year after year is not a good sign lately. The wisest affluent people will soon see the problems inherent in setting up an explosive situation.
As in every previous instance, it may not matter that the crooks have stolen all the money. They always did this. What matters is that the citizens can collectively declare in 100 ways that part or all of their scrip is no longer any good. If we do not secure some of their good will, all of the rich people’s money is nothing but pictures of presidents, and the citizens will endure inflation and print twice as much money to pay hungry citizens with a WPA-style program if we have to. Deeds granted for 1000 years for oil mining leases can suddenly be subjected to heavy annual taxation. None of the affluent people’s income tax loopholes are guaranteed if terrible times come to the common citizens. Now crack open the citizens’ spigot or else.
16.
TheLorax August 8th, 2008 2:29 pm
Be careful not to over-analyze the economic problems. America has no leadership and our economy is suffering as a result. It’s not “doomed” or “unrecoverable”. We simply need some leadership and focus in our government. Once we fire people like bush, rove, rumsfeld, cheney, rice, perino, pelosi, snow, etc. and send them to work at Burger King, we’ll start to rebuild.
Greed and corruption has damaged the integrity of the office of president, soiled our flag, and stained our honor but we CAN recover.
17.
DaSparky August 8th, 2008 2:31 pm
It is a distinct possibility that McCain gets in the oval office. The corporatists have only just begun their fear-mongering of the sheeple.
18.
johnycanuck August 8th, 2008 2:42 pm
From the Mouths of babes…
overheard whispered conversation between a mother and a young boy 8 or 9 years old,seated in the pew behind me at the funeral of a common acquaintance…
“mom?”
“yes”
“when i die, how many men do i get?”
“shhh, be quiet this is church, we don’t talk about that here.!”
’nuff said.
19.
Samski August 8th, 2008 3:21 pm
Samson, it seems the only remaining, thriving areas of US manufacturing is in arms, intelligence and security.
Perhaps it has been decided that America doesn’t need a civilian manufacturing base (China/3rd world covers those trinkets) and will stick with a wartime economy instead.
20.
Daniel David August 8th, 2008 3:29 pm
The more they cut the corporate income tax and the personal income tax for owners of Subchapter S Corporations (taxed as partnerships), the more they created a perverse incentive for jobs, wages and benefits of hired workers to be reduced or eliminated.
Why is this hard for us to grasp? We’re told that tax cuts “create” jobs. Only problem is, the reverse is more likely true. Back in the high tax seventies, companies spent more on workers to reduce the bottom line and avoid the high taxes. Now they don’t.
Win the election with Obama. Watch this be fixed a little bit.
Lose the election to McCain. Watch the wealth gap rise.
21.
frank1569 August 8th, 2008 3:36 pm
There is no reason to believe mass amounts of Americans will rise up against their government and/or the corporations, no matter how grim things get. It may be hard to accept, but all signs suggest the “protest gene” has been bred out of us, and real courage has pretty much vanished. Plus, Goliath has never been so large, well-armed and ruthless.
It’s more probable we’ll turn on ourselves while the top one percent sit on their porches and watch, sipping those mint things…
22.
Mister Chips August 8th, 2008 3:37 pm
Clinton, was merely the next in line to move the agenda forward. And move it forward he did. Why else, would Barbara Bush start referring to Bill Clinton as her “son”. The Clintons and the Bushes, following Bill’s last term, began to vacation together–play together, as the scene moves into the totally insane phase acted out through Cheney and Junior. Now, before the curtain falls on that abominable act, we have a provoked confrontation with Russia, which has all the potential of WWIII. (Now, what was that line about Fannie and Freddie?)
This machine is totally out of the reach of the U.S. electorate. What’s all the buzz amongst the herd about McCain and Obama?
23.
generallee August 8th, 2008 4:05 pm
It’s more probable we’ll turn on ourselves while the top one percent sit on their porches and watch, sipping those mint things…
Julips?
24.
randolfski August 8th, 2008 4:13 pm
Stephen V. Riley August 8th, 2008 1:56 pm
I guess what David Michael Green is saying is that we will have a collapse of Western capitalism so severe,
that it might wake us all up.
I’m in full agreement here. At this point, the only thing that’s going to wake up “live for today, pay tomorrow”
Americans is a major collapse. If this be “the fire,” i say, bring it on!!!!
25.
FrederickJohnson August 8th, 2008 4:36 pm
“Win the election with Obama. Watch this be fixed a little bit.”
The last time Clinton and the Democrats did get their shit together to fix the deficit, it was a paper thin margin despite very huge majorities in both chambers of Congress. Oh, and a great deal of the party sold out to NAFTA. And with the way Obama let’s the corporate media “decide” everything for him, he ain’t gonna be different from Mccain. He had 4 years to prove his worth and he FAILED. Besides, Obama favors more NAFTAs, turning universities into VISA-Abuse ATMs, allowing more illegal employers to hire illegalized immigrants for slave labor, more deficit spending in Iraq, etc … The reason Democrats are less credible is that even back in Roosevelt’s time, the “conservative” wing of the Democratic Party undermined liberalism to get much of a say in America. Over time, people were frustrated and beginning in the late 1960s or one could say 1980, more people thought “Well? We might as well be stuck with raw deal cons because we’ve had it with those “liberals” for not living up to their promises but instead letting the social/economic “conservatives” control the Democratic Party.” We need to elect REAL progressives and liberals who really are what they claim regardless of party. The two party duopoly is what’s killing America.
26.
hemp4victory August 8th, 2008 4:54 pm
FrederickJohnson,
The Democrats were the ones who also joined the GOP in overtaxing Cannabis and then in 1970, allowed Nixon to create the taxpayer money choking DEA to keep it illegal despite its true benefits. The Democratic Party is way too dysfunctional to even get its own identity straight much less grow a backbone and fight back. At no time these past few decades did the liberals ever infiltrate the GOP although there were some civil libertarian minded Republicans even in the 1970s. The Obama hacks are just plain desperate to simply have Democrats in power and want us to forget that the party has been nothing but a kissup to the GOP and is working harder than ever to out GOP the GOP. The Democrats should vote for the people’s interests and not for the corporate interests. If they would ever try that, people like Daniel David, DailyKos, Huffpost, etc … wouldn’t have to beg people to simply vote Democrat because the Democrats would have been more appealing to the voters naturally than is the case. Sorry Obama hacks but like Gore and Kerry, people are sick and tired of being begged upon to accept artificial BULLSHIT. Either force your Democratic Party to come clean and quit letting the conservatives in the party have their say or just let the party die as we’re already stuck with a one party system that just so happens to have 2 names, Democrat and Republican !!
27.
mmullen August 8th, 2008 5:31 pm
David Green did not use racial slurs. He used the language our forefathers used to describe coolies and wetbacks. Read carefully!
28.
militantliberal August 8th, 2008 5:43 pm
I’m not as pessimistic as Green about the coming few years because I lived through the 1979-82 Carter-Reagan depression of double-digit unemployment + double-digit inflation. That experience was worse than what we’ve experienced under W (so far). It probably helps a lot that Congress has given away our tax money to keep banks and other investment institutions from going down and taking the whole financial system with them, which is what happened in 1931-32. I’ll hazard a prediction that the economy will begin recovering in 2010, especially if we get out of Iraq, which would take pressure off our budget and let us spend the money in the U.S.
29.
expatincebu August 8th, 2008 6:09 pm
I am a liberal and I think one big mistake is to think that Oboma will make any difference at all. He contributors and advisers are all part of big finance that created this mess. Also remember that much opf the deregulation and trade liberalization that made this mess possible was signed into law happily by our last Democratic “liberal” president.
The state of the economy is not a partisan issue as both parties are complicit.
30.
starkraving August 8th, 2008 6:21 pm
future generations of un-americans will have progressively less to pass on to their kids, until they have less than their kids. at that point we’ll have started coming up with more practical solutions to poverty, such as those used by developing countries for generations - multigenerational households, communally owned resources, bartering and other non-monetary exchanges of goods and services and good old fashioned frugality.
of course these ideas are anathma to those who cling to the un-american dream of limitless wealth accumulation and consumption, but have always seemed to me to be a more agreeable state of affairs. i say, if you haven’t already, let’s all start practicing living on less. and enjoying it. it’s the wave of the future for the good old un-u.s. of a.
31.
Stephen V. Riley August 8th, 2008 6:36 pm
Blaming the Democrates or the Republicans can go on forever.
Please note: Going to the root cause of our national woes is seldom mentioned; CAPITALISM. Prof. Green rarely uses this word. Most liberals seldom have the courage to mention the word because CAPIALISM IS THE USA.
Humankind is at an evolutionary crossroad, where it needs a radical questioning of corporate capitalism and its’ predominant form of economic development. Global corporate capitalism is an irrational and unsustainable acceleration system without breaks.
Unless this system of capitalistic development is directly confronted, humankind will continue on a downward spiral of war, terrorism, increasing worldwide poverty, destabilizing social unrest and environmental devastation.
The predominant rights of capital over all human rights must end. The world looks to U.S. Citizens to end it, as we are the belly of the beast and the beast is ready to vomit.
32.
Barn Burner August 8th, 2008 7:14 pm
Come on guys, Cheer up, there probably will be lots of jobs in the ’service economy’, I mean there’s McDonalds, Wendy’s an others (lets just hope there is anyone left that can afford a burger and fries-keep your eyes on those theiven bastards, their walken off with the condiment packets).
33.
Aleister Perdurabo August 8th, 2008 7:33 pm
If you want a very clear explanation of how our economic books are cooked check out this link and take the crash course:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/
34.
cpotts18 August 8th, 2008 8:28 pm
“What if there are no more piggy banks from which to steal? What happens if the US economy has finally hit the wall of remorseless reality, and can only produce what it can honestly produce? What happens to the American economy and American standards of living if all the gimmicks have been exhausted?”
It’s quite simple. We will wake up one day and every paper will have a huge headline “Dollar Collapses” and every talking head will already be screaming about who to blame. Given the fact that we operate on a fiat currency, with all this debt, corruption, and lack of savings the dollar’s value is the only thing left to give.
The bottom line is our currency will be worthless and anything you saved will be for not. And anything you don’t own, say the title to your house because you still have 10 years left on the title, or that title to your car that you just financed, I’m sure the bankers will find a way to either take it from you or gouge you for it.
I suggest openning a money-market account with an online trading company, like e-trade and putting a chunk of your change into the euro of the pound. Our currency is essentially worthless at this point. It will just take the world another year or two to realize it.
35.
ubrew12 August 8th, 2008 9:41 pm
The Economist Magazine says:
“Between 2002 and 2006 the incomes of 99% [of Americans] rose by… 1% a year in real terms, while those of the top 1% rose by 11% a year; three-quarters of the economic gains during Mr Bush’s presidency went to that top 1%.”
I’m so glad we’re not ‘technically’ in a recession and that economic growth remains positive. Take out the richest 1% of Americans, however, and we’ve been in a recession for two years.
Also from The Economist:
Share of total income accruing to the wealthiest 1% of Americans:
1910s: 17%, 1920s: 17%, 1930s: 14%, 1940s: 11%, 1950s: 9%, 1960s: 8%, 1970s: 8%, 1980s: 11%, 1990s: 13%, 2000s: 16%, current: 17.5%
Anyone old enough will recall: America was a truly GREAT country between the 1950s and 1980s. In the 1910s-1920s, it was setting itself up for the Great Depression, and we all know whats happened since the 1980s.
36.
Rebel Farmer August 8th, 2008 9:57 pm
cpotts18 - You have some of it right. But I wouldn’t be giving financial advice if I were you. The Euro and the Pound tanked today and the dollar strengthened.
I am a financial news addict. Have been for years. The problem I face today is that nothing makes sense any longer. The whole financial systems of the WORLD have been COMPLETELY taken over by the gangster banksters and the rich elite WORLD WIDE. There is no way to equate what is happening in the economy today to what has happened in the past. Granted, there are some similarities to the Great Depression, the economic implosion of Japan and the economic collapse of Russia in the 1990’s. Zimbabwe? There are some clues to be found in past recessions. The major difference now is that we live in a globalized economy/financial system. And that fact changes everything.
My best guess is that we are in for a very rough ride for a very long time. And it is going to be far worse than the depression of the 30’s. Complications from rising oil prices, resource wars, and climate change are also unknowns.
What to do? Don’t really know. But checked the financial health of where my money is. Put most of it in a strong local credit union. There have already been 7 bank failures this year, and there are 150 on the FDIC watch list. Gold? Stocks? Commodities? Not a clue. The games are all rigged. Me, I’m getting to know my neighbors real well and only support local businesses. Gardening of course. And learning how to can/dry food and make bread. Oh, I almost forgot… I’ve worked at it really hard for several years and am now debt free. I’ve always been very frugal, so the hurdle of over spending on junk was easy to get over.
Anyway, luck to all of you. We can’t see or predict the future, but we can be prepared as best we can for whatever gets thrown our way. Staying on your feet will be all about family, friends, and community.
37.
cruz_ctrl August 8th, 2008 10:02 pm
it always strikes when i read the comments on common dreams articles, the longer the post, the less the knowledge
38.
Paul M <http://www.users.bigpond.com/pmurray> August 8th, 2008 10:04 pm
“To a cobbler’s awl or a butcher’s knife
or a porter’s knot commend me;
but from a soldier’s lazy life,
Good Heaven, pray defend me”
Any nation that puts so much of its wealth into the military will drive itself into poverty. Not until the military is seen as basically an unfortunately nessesary waste of money will the USA (and the west) become economically productive again. The root is attitudes towards the military, and the root of that - quite possibly - is a reaction against women’s lib. The military is the last bastion of masculinity.
So perhaps the key to economic recovery is gays in the military.
The solution is to change the masculinity meme from “protector” to “provider”.
My plan is this: get rid of dont ask/don’t tell. Make the miliary a PC pinkfest. Meanwhile, engage on massive government construction projects (bridges, railways, roads, ports) and - crucially - fund them in such a way that the heavy work must be done by manual labour. Sure, women will be legally free to attempt the work, but the genuinely are physically weaker on avearge and the construction sites will be a man’s world. At the same time, engage in propaganda lionising the masculinity of those hard-working boys rebuilding america’s future, as well as (if more subtly) that of the engineers and so on.
Once you make it that the way to get laid is not swaggering round with a gun, but working hard and building a future, prosperity will come.
39.
medic6869 August 8th, 2008 10:25 pm
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
- Harriet Tubman, abolitionist and a conductor on the underground railroad.
The historical truth of Harriet Tubman’s words applies, not only to those held in human bondage, but also, to the indispensable role of the human mind in human liberation. She and the other abolitionists who fought to end slavery knew that as long as white Americans believed in, or complacently accepted, the existence of human slavery the country would never be able to free itself from the tyrannical and immoral sway of the slave power. They took every instance of injustice and cruelty and forced America to look not only at the barbarity of human bondage, but to look at itself, to judge itself against the ideals it espoused to the world. They forced whites to see that none could be free while millions remained in bondage.
Can we free our minds to see beyond the current economic system? A system that puts making maximum profit the number one goal, and peoples needs last.
40.
willieb37 August 8th, 2008 10:45 pm
If China sent these idiots a pay or quit notice it wouldn’t matter. They would just pretend it was a subpeona and ignore it. Guess what will happen when China asks the debt it is owed…more war.
41.
marxistsocialist August 8th, 2008 11:31 pm
American poor people who keep voting for Democrats and Republicans have a built-in mental virus which says: “Thank you Bilderbergs, Wall Street, Exxon, The Privatized Federal Reserve, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Luwig Von Mises and the Free Market System for concentrating billions in the Heritage Clubs of this country while i am so tired, depressed and poor”
42.
MiMiCcS August 9th, 2008 2:03 am
“We harnessed yokes around Africans and imported them as if they were agricultural beasts of burden, and continued to do so for centuries.”
Uh, no that is not “we”. That was the Europeans who colonized the New World and who ran the slave trade for centuries. Very few slaves were imported into the US after the revolution, although slavery continued for another 80 years in some states. Less than 5% of African slaves shipped from Africa came to North America that was under British control. The rest of the writers we’s were “we” as in us.
jakenewton said “Also I’ve never heard of anyone respectable toutin Williams’ work. That doesn’t mean anything in itself but he sounds to me like he’s just trying to sell a newsletter.”
Duh, he was invited to testify before Congress last week (not that they are respectable but you don’t say who you consider respectable so I do not know your standards of respectability). If you want to be a denialist on a given issue, do some research and back up your belief with some facts.
43.
Shawn August 9th, 2008 2:35 am
“George Bush has laughingly admitted that he got “gentlemen’s C’s” when he was in college (those are what the rest of us, whose daddies don’t endow library wings at Ivy League schools, refer to as F’s ), so perhaps that explains his misreading of the economy.”
Question. What does George Bu$h’s shoe size have in common with his IQ?
Answer: They are identical.
Question: What do the American voters who voted for Bu$h in 200 and then again have in common with George Bu$h?
Answer: Same IQ as George W. Bu$h.
Nuff said!
Now…who out there is going to vote for a “war hero” who suffers obvious symptoms of PTSD, has a short fuse, and doesn’t know the difference between a Sunni and Shiite Muslum, or for that matter what an economy is? If you do, your IQ (and common sense) is showing!
44.
EconomyJetSetter August 9th, 2008 5:07 am
Rebel Farmer / cpotts18 - good comments. As to the tanking of the Euro/Pound, etc., what could be better for China and the Oil states? Gives them a chance to exchange dollars for Euros at a much better rate while Europe is on vacation or distracted with the Olympics. As the dollar goes up, all the other commodities go down for them too. Once they’ve off-loaded a good part of their surplus, they can let the dollar reach its natural level - virtually worthless. We didn’t “win” the Cold War, the Soviets just went bankrupt first. Our turn seems to be coming this fall. And I agree - I haven’t a clue either what is the “sure” way to protect my family from this.
45.
benmckechnie August 9th, 2008 6:09 am
Humans as ants.
Are we all too different?
We poison ants with sugar bait, intise then, bring them in. Give them what they want to kill them. Humans are the same. T.V., internet, etc. Even those who think they are above it, the ’smater ones’ as they think, and maybe they are. still part of the group, the organism. Can they escape? No, It incompasseses us all; clothes, house, education, car, it takes you over. Ignorance raighns supream. Are the majority of humans ignorant or just easily manipulated, either way does it make a difference. We fight never ending wars untill the next one, for so called freedom and peace. So many thearies in socialism but so little action. Will the people ever rise up ? Will they ever realize? Can we over come? Will the masses allways be ignorant and understand they are being played like a fiddle; is there hope. We live as slaves working for the master, playing the so called debt of what we stand against.
What are our options, Dems, or Repubs, same shit different party. Slaves till the end. Patriotism has us lost in strait jackets when we should be rising up against appresion. The people need to unite; Libral Libertarianism is the only way to go. We need to fight for us the people; retake our democracy, city by city, state by state. Our, yes our, money is being trown away, givin to corrup people. Lets stop the madness. No more taxes to the wreched filth. They are all currupt. We need to stand up together, no parties. We need to be sick of getting raped!!! Revolution is the only way. Revolution!!! Wars are started to make maony. They make money off of us, yes us, that’s you, every chance they get.
The problem is that we are all part of the machine. We are all part of the machine. Your job, your life is a part of it. You know it, you may even like it, you might not even know. You are being paid to make money for others. This is how most of up lead our lives, working to make money for others. In you job, paying off your house, your car, your loan, etc. all making money for others. Most of us will make money for others our whole life. Arn’t you sick of it? Isn’t it enough? When will you stand up? Now is the time!!! Make a stand!!! Your whole life for what? You live, you work for them, you die. Now is the time!
Our phones are all bugged, our movements are watched. This is not a democracy, they have taken over. Will you wait untill you are in prison without a court hearing? This is no longer our country. They have burned our Constitution.
What to do is your next question, mine too. How about demanding with you co-workers the pay you deserve! How about demanding from the government not to pay for a war you don’t want! Or for debts you didn’t make! Vote them all out!!!
vote for you friend, or the person you know. Not for the one who just got $100,000 from the oil industry, or for the one who just got $200,00 to make the people have diebities, and ashmah. Stand up, start a change. Lets not spend more than we have, so we can stop being controled by the banks. Most of us are with you, lets stand together, all off up. Not for Republecans or Democrates, not for Obamah, or McCans, but for us, the people. FUCK THEM!!! Let us, the people take our lives back! Start a local group. Take over the city council. Small steps to a big change. No more kings. Tell the feds you are no longer a part of the union. Lets start our own country without them. Lets start real freedom. And lets start it now!!!
46.
Lobo Gris August 9th, 2008 7:17 am
We are in deep doo doo because the normal business cycle that we used to have no longer exists. It used to be that when people at some point overspent and quit buying that the economy would slow down. Factories here would lay off workers and the economy would slow down more. To get things going again Government would stimulate the economy by placing orders at the factories or something similar just as recently they sent out checks to everyone. When they did that the factories would recall workers others would be rehired and soon the economy was booming again until the next slowdown was caused by overspending. What has changed is that “free trade” has decimated the industrial sector. The factories are located in China or elsewhere in the world other than in the U.S. So now when the government tries to stimulate the economy by traditional methods they stimulate demand in China or elsewhere in the world, not here.
Because of this regardless of who is the next president, McCain or Obama, there will be no economic recovery. There will be/is an economic depression which the Government has been able to masked with smoke and mirrors (ie the housing bubble which stimulated spending because people were using their homes as ATM’s) but which is going to show up shortly because all the fancy tricks have been exhausted. Prepare yourselves.
Lobo Gris
47.
vdb August 9th, 2008 7:35 am
“I guess what David Michael Green is saying is that we will have a collapse of Western capitalism so severe, that it might wake us all up.”
and most will just hit the snooze button and return to their dream.
48.
DaveEriqat <http://daveeriqat.wordpress.com/> August 9th, 2008 7:44 am
jakenewton:
It goes without saying – or so I thought – that comments posted in forums such as this are primarily opinions, and not necessarily statements of fact.
If you are going to quote me, them please try to retain the context of what I wrote, which was, “For one thing. subjectively speaking, the CPI reported at shadowstats is much closer to my own observations.” Yet you quoted me as, “the CPI reported at shadowstats is much closer to my own observations.” Then you asked, “How formal are your own observations?” Had you not clipped off the “subjectively speaking” portion of my reply to you, the answer to your question would have been obvious. I was trying to give you a reason why I find shadowstats’ data more trustworthy: because its findings concur with my subjective observations. Everyone who pays money for shadowstats’ newsletter obviously considers its information trustworthy as well.
For another subjective observation, I think prices for housing, rent, food, automobiles and gasoline have about tripled in the last 25 years, since 1983. Yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics (which reports the CPI) says that the CPI during that period increased only about 2.18 times. That seems much too low to me.
You stated, “Also I’ve never heard of anyone respectable toutin Williams’ work.” Who do you consider respectable? If you’re referring to the mainstream media, then it’s no wonder you’ve never heard of shadowstats. Not only does the mainstream media shun the “fringe” community, it would never report anything that undermined the government’s rosy propaganda. I have seen countless references to shadowstats by people I have great respect for – that’s how I found the site in the first place. A google search turned up 11,200 references to www.shadowstats.com, and I doubt all of those emanate from the site itself.
I was mistaken, though. I harbored the belief that Mr. Williams was at one time an account for the government. But after reading the biographical material on the web site, I see that I was wrong.
Dave
49.
marxistsocialist August 9th, 2008 9:03 am
AMERICANS ARE PAYING THE CONSQUENCES FOR BEING DUMB AND FOR VOTING FOR CAPITALIST PARTIES. HERE IS A GOOD ECONOMIC PROGRAM FROM A SOCIALIST PARTY. AMERICANS HAVE TABOOS, BIASES AGAINST SOCIALIST PARTIES. THAT’S WHY THIS COUNTRY IS GETTING SO POOR (POVERTY LEVELS ARE INCREASING BECAUSE OF CAPITALISM):
http://socialistparty-usa.org/platform/economics.html
The Socialist Party stands for a fundamental transformation of the economy, focusing on production for need not profit. So-called fair trade is meaningless as long as the world economy is dominated by a few massive corporations. Only a global transformation from capitalism to democratic socialism will provide the conditions for international peace, justice, and economic cooperation based on the large-scale transfer of resources and technology from the developed to the developing countries.
1. We demand the immediate withdrawal of the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and oppose the creation of a widened Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
2. We call for worker and community ownership and control of corporations within the framework of a decentralized and democratically determined economic.
3. We call for a minimum wage of $15 per hour, indexed to the cost of living.
4. We call for a full employment policy. We support the provision of a livable guaranteed annual income.
5. We call for all financial and insurance institutions to be socially owned and operated by a democratically-controlled national banking authority, which should include credit unions, mutual insurance cooperatives, and cooperative state banks. In the meantime, we call for re-regulation of the banking and insurance industries.
6. We call for a steeply graduated income tax and a steeply graduated estate tax, and a maximum income of no more than ten times the minimum. We oppose regressive taxes such as payroll tax, sales tax, and property taxes.
7. We call for the restoration of the capital gains tax and luxury tax on a progressive, graduated scale.
8. We call for compensation to communities– and compensation, re-training, and other support service for workers– affected by plant and military base closings as stop-gap measures until we reach our goal of creating a socialist society totally separate from the global capitalist economy.
9. We oppose the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization as instruments of capitalist oppression throughout the world.
10. We demand cancellation of Third World debt.
11. We call for a National Pension Authority to hold the assets of private pension funds, and a levy against corporate assets for any pension fund deficits.
12. We call for increased and expanded welfare assistance and increased and expanded unemployment compensation at 100% of a worker’s previous income or the minimum wage, whichever is higher, for the full period of unemployment or re-training, whichever is longer.
13. We support a program of massive federal investment in both urban and rural areas for infrastructure reconstruction and economic development.
14. We support tax benefits for renters equal to those for homeowners.
15. We call for the elimination of subsidies and tax breaks that benefit corporations and all other forms of corporate welfare.
.
50.
DogLeg August 9th, 2008 9:06 am
Without reading any of the comments above,
Any one who fails to notice this ‘recession’s’ beginnings is in the 1970’s is truly ‘newborn’ and if of the generation of Bush, ’stillborn.’ The writer of this article simplifies the economic history of this parasitic culture to inure our senses to 40 years of stagnant progress in wages, working conditions and equity, health care, pensions (including the rip off of), the dismantling of Federal tax supported programs and agencies etc. ad nauseum. Meanwhile, trillions of dollars are spent bailing out corporations such as Chrysler, Chevrolet, untold numbers of savings and loan companies and subsidizing every corporation in the country with whatever…and the wars this collusive group needs to maintain growth for. Some of which are government pension funds, state and federal.
And those pension funds pay out pennies to the dollar to their retirees, while the state and federal governments attempt to steal the billions of dollars paid into those funds plus the ‘earnings.’
Where’s my koolaid?….
51.
aajhill August 9th, 2008 9:08 am
Samson’s most telling moment came at the end of his comment, when he finally stated explicitly what he had merely alluded to before: Democrats are “more” to blame for our predicament than Republicans, because “they” (read: Bill Clinton) abandoned liberal principles, joined the kleptocracy, and stopped compensating for right wing lunacy. The solution is for progressives to take back their party and to keep conservatives on a leash long enough to rebuild the economy, just as they did under FDR in the last century.
52.
marxistsocialist August 9th, 2008 9:20 am
WHY ARE MY COMMENTS MODERATED? WHAT’S THE FASCISM IN THIS WEBSITE FOR?
53.
biwee August 9th, 2008 9:42 am
The Zionists that run the Federal Reserve, Wall Street and the US Treasury are the problem. Unless, or until, the American voting public recognizes that, there is little hope of a return to fair and progressive government that regulates to provide equality and fairness to all. Since 2000, most in America have fallen further and further behind
while private equity and hedge fund managers make hundreds, or thousands, of millions of dollars. America is probably LOST. AEI, PNAC, AIPAC, ADL, and the Federal Reserve have won. Ashkenazi Khazars own YOU completely.
54.
DaveEriqat <http://daveeriqat.wordpress.com/> August 9th, 2008 9:44 am
DogLeg: I agree with you that our standard of living began to decline in the 1970s. Or to put it another way, our standard of living peaked in the 1970s. I’ve been saying that for years.
People have pointed to the go-go days of the 1980s and late 1990s, but any appearance of prosperity during those eras was simply an illusion, smoke and mirrors, financial alchemy, unless one was among the wealthy classes. To a large extent, the prosperity that the wealthy enjoyed during those eras was not due to increased wealth production, but due to redirecting wealth away from us masses to themselves.
Today in the U.S. wealth is a zero-sum game. By shipping much of its industrial base to China, this country has destroyed its ability to create real wealth (evidenced by the widening trade deficit), so today a person can only become wealthy at the expense of another.
Dave
55.
Ian McGarrett August 9th, 2008 9:45 am
While the Clinton era may have to ultimately share blame for the current economic mess, it must be in fairness concluded that Clinton could hardly have known how badly his successor would, in the words of John Kerry, fuck things up.
56.
jakenewton August 9th, 2008 10:17 am
” he was invited to testify before Congress last week (not that they are respectable…”
No, I don’t see this as a sign of respectability. I think he is a doom and gloomer trying to sell a newsletter. If you can give some other insight as to why I should beleive him I’m all ears.
57.
staying_sane_in_an_insane_world August 9th, 2008 11:10 am
DEUTSCHMARK, REICHSMARK, RENTENMARK or PAPIERMARK?
The author of the article writes: “Does the dollar need to become even more worthless than the 1930s Deutschmark for him to be concerned…”
Actually, the Deutschmark was only introduced in 1948. Before that was the Reichsmark (RM), and before that - prior to 1923 - was the Papiermark, or just Mark, and that was the currency which experienced hyperinflation during the 1920s, becoming virtually worthless.
Incidentally, there was also the Rentenmark, which was introduced in 1923, just before the Reichsmark came into circulation. However, as it was such a short-lived currency, lasting less than a year, it’s hardly worth recalling - not that I can, cos I’m too young! :) <http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif>
58.
staying_sane_in_an_insane_world August 9th, 2008 11:21 am
Here’s a site describing the various notes I mentioned above, with some pretty pictures of them ;) <http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif>
http://www.germannotes.com/hist_mark.shtml
59.
miftin August 9th, 2008 11:58 am
What I see in here are a bunch of AMERICANS concerned about THEIR standard of living.
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