This whole mess should not be such a surprise to any one.
This country has been running huge trade deficits for 15 years. Along with the trade deficitsour government has run up huge debts do to uncontrolled spending by both parties. Some of us thought that the republican controlled houses would swallow hard and stifle these excesses,we were terribly wrong.
Couple this with huge pay cuts that came along with outsourcing of Americans jobs and that translates into a zero savings rate that this country has been experiencing for the past 3-4 years.
The shrinking dollar was meant to lower the cost of American made products around the globe,great idea if America made any goods that the world would like to purchase.
With uncontrolled fuel cost and raising interest payments many of our friends and family members found it all but impossible to maintain affluent life styles that had become the norm.
Am I making excuses? No. But neither is this rocket science.
Not all, but most posting here have a level of intelligence that should have prevented the financial collapses that many Americans are seeing. But in a time when our government has its nose in so much of our every day lives how did the obvious go on for so long with so few seeing the devastation developing?
And I really don't need to hear the buggy whip failure explained to me, and paying some lug nut to install windshield wipers at $36.00 per hour has been gone over also.
This whole debacle can be traced back to the elimination of Americas manufacturing base and the massive exporting of the American dollars.
The only ones that don't have American dollars are Americans workers.
A variety of issues contribute to exactly how a thing in the market plays out, it wasn't just the government's fault, but chances are, they made it a heck of alot easier, but I think that you've got to blame for lots of things, people who somehow get it in their head that the credit card = free stuff. Getting a bad credit score can really ruin your future prospects in life for awhile, delay them, at least, unless youstart repairing your score right away. When you have an irresponsible consumer, then a tangled mess is soon in coming, and the responsible folks, who actually watch what they spend, stick to a budget, and pay taxes (unlike 1/3 of Americans who don't) end up paying for it.
But then, it's not just the consumer's fault, like I said, it's alot of things that contribute, and addresing only government spending and taxation or messing with the private sector isn't going to solve anything permanently, it'll put the cork back in the bottle, but sooner or later the bottle is going to spit the cork out again once you shake it.
If the election do any thing ,they truly bring out the worst in what aremost likely compassionate and sensible people.
Their are couple examples of the most closed minded individuals I've ever seen posting here lately and with the election closing down hopefully so will their short sightedness
I have hope, but it is for four years from now. After watching the last debate, neither one of those guys gave me reason to have any hope under their leadership. Neither of them are willing to go into any details on what they are going to do. Kind of leads me to believe they don't have any idea how they are going to tackle the problems they will face. That's a scary thought.
I am however afraid, that in four years, those running will once again bea let down.
I agree with the original post, this has been coming for a long time and it was obvious. Is the energy crisis just something that happened one day and surprised everyone? Shouldn't have Clinton and his people seen this coming and started something back then when the economy at least had the appearance that it was booming? How about Bush? Certainly, he should have stepped it up and started the ball rolling.
Week after week I read where the problems stem from foolish Americans spend more money than we make, could one of you please point out the political party that has shown any ability to be fiscally responsible while growing an economy that will support new workers and yet protect those whom are entering retirement age.
The stimulus package was Wya's answer this spring now we adding 700 billion on top of dismal failure after dismal failure.
Isn't insanity described as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.[&:]
We saw this coming in the 70's, especially with the oil situation. OPEC gave us a few really beneficial lessons in how they could use oil to hurt our economy. Beginning with Reagan, every subsequent president has completely ignored those lessons. Not only has the government allowed outsourcing of jobs, technology and manufacturing capacity overseas, it has actually encouraged outsourcing. Along with that outsourcing came the negative trade balance. American companies manufacturing goods overseas to import back here to sell to people who used to have jobs making those very same goods.
Why would Bush set the ball rolling any more than Reagan did? This is basic supply side, laissez faire Reaganomics and every Republican today has bought into the theory lock, stock and barrel. The market will solve all it's own problems all by itself with no outside interference, oversight or regulation from gov't. Anything other than strict compliance to this code is 'socialism.'
Problem is, when the market finally takes corrective action, the reaction seems to be fatal. At least, it's painful enough that the gov't had to take a hand to try and keep it from being fatal.
Plenty of blame to go around. I hate either side just blaming the other side, or denying any share of the blame for this situation. But what really drives my nuts is the liberals faulting Bush for not fixing the mistakes that the liberal policies caused.
Bush has blame for standing by and not sounding the alarm, motivating his party to work on a solution before the problem really hit. But when Obama, for example, who worked with ACORN, pushing banks with prosecution into taking risky loans blames the "Bush economic policies" for the mortgage meltdown ... I just go berzerk!!! Or Barney Frank, or Jimmy Carter...
Captain Obvious ?
