He also sang this song ( which is emblematic of what's happening to America now ):
Listen here
Posted on 06/10/2011 7:05:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It really is a Great Recession now.
You have to be around 90 to even remember an economy like this. The United States has not experienced two straight years of 9% unemployment since before the Second World War.
As Amity Shales wrote in The Forgotten Man, it was the duration of the economic collapse which began in 1929, not its severity, which created the Great Depression. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States has now had unemployment of 9%, give or take a couple tenths of a point, since May, 2009.
The most recent figure, for May, 2011, is 9.1%.
In a speech on Tuesday, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke essentially threw up his hands. He's right. The Keynesian economic toolbox is empty. So is monetary policy -- unless you want to radically inflate the economy and depreciate the dollar.
China and other nations are already challenging the dollar's status as the world's sole reserve currency. Revving up the printing presses at the Bureau of Currency will only make that result inevitable.
More government stimulus -- which is what Democratic economists like Paul Krugman are advocating -- is also politically impossible. It's also not clear it would work. Yet Professor Krugman is correct when he says that the Great Recession is caused by a lack of demand. He's also absolutely correct to point out -- as he did on Charlie Rose last Friday night -- that the current situation is unacceptable.
Continuation of these levels of unemployment will cause us to lose an entire generation. The Great Recession is creating a fundamental change in the nature of unemployment, careers, family life, and economic prospects in this country. In the last two years, Bob Herbert of the New York Times and Don Peck of the Atlantic Monthly have both written powerfully on this topic.
Mr. Peck's piece, which appeared in March, 2010, has turned out to be especially prophetic. Fifteen months ago, he wrote: "[t]he economy now sits in a hole more than 10 million jobs deep -- that's the number required to get back to 5% unemployment, the rate we had before the recession started, and the one that's been more or less typical for a generation."
That hole is still there. And we need to create about 1.5 million new jobs every year -- about 125,000 new jobs every month -- just to keep the unemployment rate from climbing farther.
Those of us who have children and grandchildren now entering the employment market are rightly concerned.
Can anything be done?
President Obama's only defense -- it's Bush's fault! -- is ludicrous. And its rejection by most voters is reflected in the latest polls. With this week's sudden resignation of the President's top economic advisor Austun Goolsbee, most senior members of the Obama economic team -- except Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner and chairman Bernanke -- have left government. So have Mr. Obama's Secretary of Commerce and his first White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.
They know a bad thing when they see it. But to repeat: can anything be done?
No. The problem with the economy is one of politics, not economics. The economic solution is known, but it cannot be implemented until there's a Republican president and a Republican Congress. The reason is the ideology of the Man in the White House.
The stimulus which will turn this economy around has to come from the private sector, not the government. President Obama and the Democrats who control the Senate will never agree to take the actions necessary to jump-start private business investment. And that's even though the private-sector money for such a turn-around is readily available.
According to Standard & Poor's, at December 31, 2010, the 500 big American companies in its S & P 500 Index were sitting on $2.4 trillion in cash and short-term investments.
Five months on, there's probably a lot more of it.
This $2.4 trillion cash hoard has steadily accumulated since Barack Obama became president. At the end of 2008, it already stood at a record $811 billion. A year later, it was $ 1.18 trillion. In 2010, it more than doubled.
The existence of this huge accumulation of corporate capital in cash and marketable securities over the last three years means that the United States is experiencing a classic "capital strike." A capital strike occurs under a system of democratic capitalism where unacceptable political risk discourages private investment from taking place. The result is economic stagnation and a steady build-up of uninvested capital.
That's exactly what we have at the present time. Consider:
That $2.4 trillion represents 16% of total U.S. GDP last year of $14.7 trillion. It's also three times the size of the failed stimulus of 2009. Its injection into the American economy -- without any need for either a tax increase, an increase in the federal deficit, the hiring of a single federal bureaucrat, or an Act of Congress -- would be like firing the afterburner on an F-18.
Okay, you say: what might a package of actions by the federal government to unleash that $2.4 trillion (more likely, today, over $3 trillion) gusher of private investment capital look like? It's not rocket science. Consider the following:
CONGRESS IS ADJOURNED. THE LIBERTIES OF THE PEOPLE ARE SECURE.
Furlough all non-essential federal civilian employees for the month of August, without pay but with benefits. In effect: have a one-month government shut-down.
Would this program work, by driving GDP growth and creating millions of private-sector jobs in a turbo-charged economy? Sure. Is there any change President Obama and the Democrats who control the Senate support even one of these items? No.
Here's the point: the problem is not a lack of economic knowledge of what to do. The problem is ideology -- and the need for regime change in Washington. That won't happen until January, 2013, at the earliest.
The Capital Strike will end when the Obama Administration ends. Until then, our unemployed children and grandchildren will have to wait...and wait...and wait.
OBAMA MADE IT WORSE
Every time they bring out that stupid “Obama inherited the Bush recession” just say “OK and HE MADE IT WORSE”
Unemployment was 6% under Bush
went up to almost 10% under Obama
HE MADE IT WORSE~!!
As that famous singer and personality Al Jolson once said, “You ain’t seen nuttin’ yet!”
that’s a good one... also.. “WE CAN DO BETTER”
What we need are more open borders, more foreign aid, and most of all we need to raise and raise and raise and raise tax.
The more money we ‘take’, the more money ‘they’ have.
It is the Democrat monetary philosophy.
Don't worry that it is completely stupid, illogical, and bound to fail.
For a Liberal, that is where they live.
Whomever replaces Obama stands to gain massively if they can just take a few of the actions named in the article.
If we can ensure it is a conservative, it will restore the nation’s faith in our principles.
He forgot to add obamacare to the mix.
No it’s the first one he lists
The slogan should be: He made the mess, then he made it worse. He and his Dem buddies are responsible for the housing collapse which was the source of the economic disaster. Take Dems out of government for the last fifty years, and the average American would be a lot wealthier.
Even after Obama leaves office, businesses must consider the supporters that put him in office. Those that believe in corporatism or the collective will still be after the ‘free lunch’.
The producers/achievers are now on notice. You will be required to sacrifice for the ‘common good’.
Just look at the deficit. Someone should figure out just how much sacrifice is required for the current fiasco.
Capital Strike!!
Repealing Obamacare was in his first point.
I missed it. I just saw Dodd Frank.
This article barely scratches the surface of all the treasonous shit obama has done so far.
Eliminate or greatly reduce the EPA. This agency alone is killing growth.
Sell 70% of government lands to American taxpayers.
It costs billions each year just to maintain these lands - none of which are put to productive use.
My main concern is that the majority of idiots who voted for this POS are still suffering from idiocy and will vote for him again.
Bump
Obama (as all liberals do) tried to have his cake and eat it too.
He believed the Keynesian claptrap about government spending stimulating the economy. To please the left, he introduced Obamacare (which anyone with even half a brain) knew would negatively impact the economy and drive jobs overseas. To please the left, he introduce all this green jobs technology, which since it costs more to make than it sells for, is a job killer - you can never improve a system by introducing an inefficiency into it. Add in anti growth regulations and you have quite a few anchors holding back the economy.
Obama thought the stimulus and quantitative easing would be sufficient to overcome these anchors and the economy would improve. In other words something for nothing - which is the basis of Keynesian stupidity.
All the stimulus did was provide a sugar high - temporarily keeping teachers and government employees on the job for one more year and quantitative easing is nothing more than a backhanded way of increasing our taxes via inflation.
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