R & D
The Business Cycle Dating Committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) determines the amount of business activity in the economy by looking at employment, industrial production, real income and wholesale-retail sales.
We're in a Recession, which occurs when business activity starts to fall until the time when it bottoms out. When it starts to rise again we have what’s called an expansionary period. The average recession lasts about a year.
Speaking street smart, in a recession your neighbor loses his job. In a depression you lose yours.
What distinguishes a Recession from a Depression in fact involves only the amount of the same event: a drop in GDP. Economists established the border between the two at 10 percent. If GDP drops by more than that, we graduate from R to D. In the big D, lots of people, including politicians, lose their jobs. Fortunately, D has occurred in the United States very rarely. As all readers know the greatest occurred from 1929 to 1933 when GDP crashed a full third and devastated millions. The years 1934 to 1937 actually saw expansion, but then 1938 to 1939 saw another 18 percent body blow that made the modest mid-30 growth disappear. Since WWII, the United States has not experienced a Depression.
Thanks to the grotesquely irresponsible gluttonous orgy of Eggplant and his GOP corporate whore 2000-2006 Congress, we’re deep into a situation that has no attractive choices. Some put the chances of experiencing the first D in 70 years at better than 20 percent. Healthy otherwise, we could sustain the housing hit, but we are not healthy otherwise. We are borrowing a fortune from the rest of the planet to funnel trillions to Cheney’s profiteers. The number without health insurance is the highest in decades. One out of eight Americans lives in poverty. Over half live in scarcity, above poverty but barely scraping by without any savings.
Hundreds of thousands lose their homes as we speak. Who will buy them? With foreclosures available at fifty cents a buck why build new homes? The number I personally know losing construction jobs has gone double digit as has those handed pink slips who supplied materials and services to home builders. A mortgage professional I know runs a branch for a mortgage firm. Her office had 23 employees a year ago. Now it has three.
Government by the rich for the rich has bled the nation. People are terrified and furious. The irony: the party of the ultra-rich is broke. They ran the nation into the ground.
The nation will return the favor.
The demise of the GOP will be financial in nature.
posted by x4mr at 12:25 AM
7 Comments:
Bush and Cheney ran as a "CEO administration". They didn't lie. They laid it all out there for the voters to see, and the voters were willfully blind.
Sirocco, you can't be serious.
They didn't lie?!
They laid it all out?!
They did nothing but lie. Perhaps you refer to the context of stating they were going to give money to the rich, which they did.
Cheney did say, as written by x4mr here somewhere, that the elections did not matter.
They destroyed tapes. They destroyed millions of emails. They held secret meetings.
I agree the public bears some of the blame for the blindness, but they had help.
The end of the GOP will be financial...indeed.
I think there is going to be some positions that are going to really kill the GOP.
First, a very persuasive argument is that the GOP no longer cares a lick about smaller government. They care about big government for foreign ventures like Iraq and place the burden of their unrestrained spending on domestic programs...which they still intend to cut.
The dems need to say over and over again how much money is spent on Iraq and how much money that would buy for healing our economy and protecting those who are most vulnerable during the recession.
Second, cuts in education funding at a time that tuition rates are going up up up....on the GOP watch.
Third, immigration. They can lay out the boogie man of immigrants taking American jobs all they want, but most business leaders with a lick of sense KNOW all too well what the impact on the economy will be as that labor is not available. We are already seeing it.
Navigator,
Aye, my comment about not lying was solely in the context of not lying about running the country as CEOs do a business .... maximizing short-term profit for the few at the expense of long-term stability for the many, etc.
They said they were going to do it, and they did it. People didn't understand (or didn't want to understand) what they really meant.
Yes, I can't wait to put democrats in office, so that the GOP can continue governing, only with less visibility.
This comment has been removed by the author.
The GOP is the most corrupt and unconscionable organization in history.
The Bush administration in the lead up to the Iraq war told 935 outright lies to the nation to create a false pretense for invading a sovereign nation. We have killed and injured thousands and thousands and run our country trillions into debt on LIES, intentional, deliberate LIES.
I cannot believe we are not impeaching and indicting these criminals for TREASON. They have committed crimes against the country and humanity. They deserve to be brought to trial and sentenced as our laws state.
I believe the crimes they have committed warrant execution by firing squad. My history is nothing like the readers here, but I'm pretty sure we executed some kid for treason because he left his post or something.
Look at what this president has done. If that is not TREASON and CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, nothing is.
Post a Comment
<< Home