redblueamerica.com

When Paul Volcker stepped up to the plate in the late '70s, he had guts. Oil prices were high then, too. So was gold. And the dollar was in deep trouble. Inflation ran as high as 13.5%. Volker, as the new chief of the Fed, roped in the money supply and cranked up interest rates, blowing a decade of monetary mismanagement out America's tailpipe.

Most people go by how their own family is faring economically.
Most people say they were doing quite well during the Clinton years. But
far too much is at stake for the mega-rich to allow you, or me, to have any political say. They hand pick their puppets ( like Obama who knows nothing about running the country ) and they WILL manage them carefully. How did he get elected to the state and then the senate HOW with no money $ ? Anyone who gets out of line, has their careers ruined or will never be elected or elected again. Why do you think the wealthy owned MEDIA is against Hillary. They LIKE the new bankruptcy laws --cuts to medicare and medicaid and like to get tax relief for taking jobs overseas.

Yes, my point was that neither side has a monopoly on conspiracy theories or doom-sayers. I does seem that the fringes of the right are pretty wacky, if you count some of the religious cults, like Christian Identity. The wackos of the left get so far out they are on their own planet, like the extreme parts of PETA and ELF.

I was being sarcastic.

Like the Gay Agenda, the Mexican Invasion, the Iraq WMD, the Drug Threat, the Yellow Peril, the Catholicism of America, the Floridation Threat to Our Vital Fluids, The Destruction of Marriage by Lesbians, The International Zionist Banking Conspiracy, The Tri-Lateral Commission? Like that?

Oh, wait, those were Right Wing Fears... Sorry, my bad.

Listen to Kevin Phillips. He's a Conservative who got thrown out of the nest for not believing in Reagan enough.

He says;

"We're not just looking at an ordinary recession. Since the 1970s, the United States has redefined itself from a manufacturing nation to a financial economy built on debt, leverage, and a considerable ratio of speculation. Both political parties have been complicit in this, and the downturn now beginning will be unusual and potentially tragic"

The business class in America has declared "the worker" Private Enterprise Enemy Number One, and has done its best to outsource, downsize and automate any worker who had any craft knowledge whatsoever. And now we see what we get. Our consumer goods, our cars, even our Army's guns and uniforms are made overseas, where we can't control the quality and production. Marx had one thing right. Power is controlling the means of production. We don't do that any more.

The MBA class have covered up that gaping hole in our economy by floating bubble after bubble in tech stocks, Savings and loans, mergers and acquisitions, energy futures (enron) and recently in mortgages. Every time the margins are thinner, the bubbles are bigger, and the crashes harder. The middle class is hanging on by the skin of its teeth, and nowadays it takes four years of college and $80,000.00 worth of debt to even start out in life.

Recession? Hell no. We are into something with no name yet, typical of a decedent culture, plus peak oil, plus climate change, plus China, India, Russia, Brazil. And the way we are going to triumph is by starting wars with Arabs and cutting taxes on the wealthy?

Good luck with that.

Wasn't it negative last quarter, but barely squeaked by this quarter with 0.5% growth? Recession is defined as two quarters of negative, and we almost, almost, made it two this quarter.

Either way, anybody who has tried to feed their familes, sell their house, fill up their gas tank, or get a job lately knows the reality of the situation. It's tough out there right now.