Every day I am still reading articles debating whether we are going into a recession, and how deep it will be.
Ring! Ring! Ring! Wake up!!
We have been in a recession for at least 6 months already, and have been sliding down that inevitable slope for the better part of a year.
The decline began ,as usually happens, a little over a year ago, just as the DJIA was hitting its all time peak.
The price of houses was beginning to fall, and the pundits and promoters were championing the good times in an effort to insure a successful X-Mas 07, season.
The Holidays were somewhat O K , but the market began to fall shortly after New Years, and continued to drop like a rock in a clear pond , and is still searching for its base almost 10 months later.
The lagging market in late 07 was the signal, and the freefall of 08 is the Market telling us Recession is here.
We still havn’t hit bottom, and the World Wide connection is pulling everyone down along with the U S economy.(They can’t live with us, and they sure as h-ll can’t live without us.)
Their dependence on a successful American economy to sustain their own economies, has to be driving our enemies crazy. They need us .
How sweet.
The country also didn’t fall into Depression until months after the crash in 1929…I read that little fact recently. There’s a very rational explanation as to why nobody is saying we’re in a recession. 1, because nobody wants to believe it. 2, because it will destroy what shred of consumer confidence still exists and launch us into an even worse situation. I agree that they should all just suck it up though.
The economic system is a cyclical living entity.
It can’t always go in 1 direction. It has to gexpand, then pause or contract, in order to build a base for the next upward growth spurt.
Human nature takes the good times , created by and propelled by an incident or invention( see the dot com, boom, the housing boom, the economic growth stimulated by a war like WW II , or Viet Nam,etc.)
Human nature takes an expansion / growth period and pushes it to excess.
We are a greedy and rather stupid race in general( present company excluded– of course)
Expansion, contraction is expected and normal. The excesses which they have named “a bubble” is where we get into trouble.
A bubble by definition is filled with hot air and can be popped with a pin prick.
the bubble effect is built into the system. A company isnt said to be doing well unless they grow. If they stand still or retract, their stock prices decrease. This leads to unchecked growth, and even to a mentality where being a pirate just for the sake of making a buck is fostered.
When you take growth to an unchecked extreme, you might generate an uncontrolled corporate greed.,
Greed is a negative in any field when taken to an unchecked extreme. It is greed that pushes an athlete to take steroids, or other performance enhansing drugs.
Agressive progress when generated in a somewhat structured environment is what leads to many of our inventions and discoveries. A positive for humanity.
If only people would strive for progress without the notion of greed needed as a driving force. You mentioned the need for growth. Eventually, on a long enough timeline, or as present matters seem to indicate, on a much shorter timeline than we thought, you can’t grow any more. The system is invariably flawed because it’s based on resources that will eventually die out, from mineral deposits of metals, to oil, to land. The system as it exists has to change a great deal in the years to come…short term or long term, or it can no longer exist.
Without progress hard work and the capitalist incentive to create and invent, you have a stagnant world.
Who is going to work and spend the resources to cure cancer, cure heart disease, invent the technology so that someone can sit down at a computer and create a cartoon.
I think that George Bush is the worst president in the history of this country.
He has lied to us and come close to breaking our economy with the help of Harry Reed,Speaker Pelosi, Barney Frank et al.
The cause of this financial disaster is social engineering. In 1992 the congress at Clintons urging, strong armed the banks and Fannie and Freddie to make loans to people who could not afford the loans.As long as real estate went up the value of the property covered the loan and allowed people to pull out equity with 2nd mortgages,
as property values crashed, the loans became larger that the property and the banks could not get paid.
Read some of my older blogs. I am a realist.
I love my country and the freedom we have.
I an not a Republican and McCain is ONLY the lesser of 2 evils.
I remember Communism you don’t. It isn’t pretty.
In all fairness, I’m agreeing in essence that socialism doesn’t necessarily work, because people as a whole are lazy and take advantage of the system. I may not remember communism, having been in diapers and cute pajamas at the time, but I know what happened. That doesn’t mean that the current system is the best and only option. And as far as creation is concerned, people will always strive to create things, whether there is economic incentive or not. The best cartoons aren’t made by people trying to make some money, they are made by people who respect and love cartoons for the joy and the art and everything about it. Art in general is like that. And many other things. And if a scientist thinks he is going to get rich by researching cancer at a university for 30 years, he is probably wrong. Why do you continue to paint after all?
Oh, and I’ve heard about that push by the Clinton administration that led to the bubble in the first place. Interesting how nobody is clear of blame, huh?
Let me tell you how proud of you I am.
Your dialogue is intelligent and insightful, although filtered through the idealism of youth.
If your guy wins, I hope we don’t live to regret the results.
Freedom is a very precious commodity, not seen very often in world history.
Idealogues who are convinced they are right, and who walk in a circle of extreme like minded people are dangerous.
I’m sure He is a good guy, just a little misguided, and with the potential to change our country irrevocably and forever.
I hope I am wrong, and that this too shall pass.
Socialism and Communism are failures over and over again, and I would hate for an Idealogy to bring down our Great Country.