Truer words were never spoken. The left wing are the captains of truth accountability! Anyone who says otherwise is a LIAR!!!!!
Measured in 2009 dollars, net worth comes to about $173,000 per person, compared with $94,000 in 1982, according to Lynn Reaser, the president of the National Association for Business Economics. http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2009/11/08/bus_554923.shtm The situation in 1981 was really bad in that the US didn't recover from the 1973-75 recession until 1978. So, there was only a couple of years of 'Good Times' until the double dip recession of '80 and '81-82. Debt is high. But I don't believe that this will lead to a 1930's style Great Depression. I'm betting that inflation is going to take hold. The price of gold already is at $1,100 and Oil is $79 a barrel. Inflation may cause a worse crisis than we have now. What's going to happen should interest rates go to double digits. This could be a big banking crisis in that banks have made trillions of dollars in mortgages at 5%. It took about three years for inflation to get out of control in the '70s. I believe that in 1979 the unumployment rate had dropped to 5.6%. We may see some relative good times for a couple of years once the recovery starts. But the unknown is the inflation. At this time most of inflation is being exported to Asia and the Third World. It's impossible to say how long this will last. But there's a lot of money out there. I heard something the other days that the largest big banks have $1.4 trillion in the stock market. A lot of money is also going into commodities. On the job front, it appears that we will have a jobless recovery. Much more similiar to the jobless recovery from the '91 and 2000 recession.
That's my guess too, and it won't be by accident (although it may well accidently slip out of the control of the financial sector). The fastest and most painless way to reduce debt is to devalue it. For example, the inflation in the decade of the seventies effectively cut the value of debt in half - a billion of debt in 1970 was only $500 million in inflation adjusted dollars at the end of the decade. Keep in mind that taxes are generally not indexed to inflation, so assuming payrolls increase at the rate of inflation, tax rates go up on a large number of workers as well.
I have a hard time seeing payrolls increasing. Payrolls are based on supply and demand for jobs, and right now, that scale is heavily tilted in favor of the employer. Small business operation was the old standby to get around this issue, but in a lagging economy and with a trillion dollars in new taxes to pay for health care, small business is going to be a lot harder to operate. Couple that with the rest of your post, which I agree with, and you have a rapidly diminishing quality of life for the majority of the U.S. population. If we cut govt. spending now, devalued the currency enough to significantly pay down the debt in 5 years(20%? but huge as a % of GDP), and somehow managed to keep the dollar as the world's reserve note, perhaps the economy could be rebuilt on a foundation not made of quick sand. Of course I think there is a better chance of monkey's flying out of my butt.
Hmm....Democrat controlled congress. Could there be a trend... a correlation? (I'm being sarcastic). Of course there is. The President only has x amount of control. It is the lobby fed congressmen (people) that push bad ideas through.
There is medicine now for that you know. Wouldn't it be ironic if the health care bill passed, then you couldn't have access to that medicine because the government didn't approve it?
Good Times Theme: Good Times. Any time you meet a payment. Good Times. Any time you need a friend. Good Times. Any time you're out from under. Not getting hastled, not getting hustled. Keepin' your head above water, Making a wave when you can. Temporary lay offs. Good Times. Easy credit rip offs. Good Times. Scratchin' and surviving. Good Times. Hangin in a chow line Good Times. Ain't we lucky we got 'em Good Times.
~ The opposite effect for securities, the stock market, where the price of securities increase in proportion to rate of inflation over time. ~ Inflation may show itself in the future but what better time for the gov't to borrow money than at historically low interest rates, when forced to do so. - The navigation to avoid Great Depression II is the overriding economic concern for this country at the present time and is just about complete....and done so by a liberal administration as was the first one managed by FDR.
This will hold true as long as inflation is controlled below 10%. Using the 70's as an example the stock market tanked to 1000 points when inflation got out of control. The DOW was worth 1 ounce of Gold. The US Government is unable to pay back the national debt. The interest alone is about $500 billion a year. In the nest few years of Obama the national debt will increase 50%. The US is spending at a higher rate adjusted for inflation than what we borrowed to fight WW2.
You must be referring to the TARP funds which started in 2008. Economists will debate for decades to come whether they were the right solution to avoiding the collapse of the banking system which may or may not have happened without them. The 787 billion dollar "Stimulus" bill and the trillion dollar health care bill have absolutely NOTHING to do with helping avoid any kind of depression. If you think they are some how helping our economy, you need to put down the crack pipe.
With regard to the Extremist Right Wing commentators here: When the stock market was tanking early this year, the Extremists couldn't restrain themselves blaming Obama. Now the market is rebounding....the Extremists scream that it doesn't mean anything. Seriously, these Right Wing Extremist mouthpieces have nothing of substance to add. They can only blame. They haven't the foggiest notion of how to come up with something of substance that would actually be beneficial to anyone. Afterall, the size and scope of this recession is entirely a function of the extremist right wing administration and philosophy that allowed financial and real estate firms to destroy the American economy. Nice going extremists.
What's most sad about these kind of statements is that private health insurance companies deny access to medications all the time. (and of course they also routinely drop coverage for people once they get sick which is far worse than any of the paranoia that right wing nutters dream up about a potential government run health insurance option.) Furthermore, the only people who would even be eligible for the public option as the plan stands now don't even currently have health insurance. In the current House bill, the public option is only going to be available to those not already covered by their employer health care plan.