This is neither a recession nor a depression.

[leftofthedial]

This is a permanent ratcheting down of the US economy. We no longer have a viable manufacturing base. We no longer produce enough goods of value to sustain a first-world economy. We have such massive debt that we can no longer service it, much less rebuild. Our economy is and always has been demand-side-based; consumers buy stuff. Lots of stuff. Now, after a generation of relentless pummeling by idiotic supply-side policies, consumers have massive debt, fewer jobs, lower-paying jobs, lower income, no security... It is clear that unionized labor, which fueled consumerism and created American prosperity post-WWII, is not coming back.


Other nations--China, India, some European countries--have passed us by in every way in their ability to compete globally. Our economy will continue to slip until we find a sustainable, organic level somewhere further down the global economic pecking order, where we belong. We probably will slide even deeper than that "natural" level for some time and then recover gradually as we pay off debt (IF we can pay off debt). I think it will be deeply painful for a long time--years, not months. We have no fundamental capability--not the capital and not the ability to produce our way out of the downturn--to restore the former level of our economy. We can not consume our way out of this slide. We can not manufacture our way out of this slide. We can not spend our way out of this slide. All we can do is blindly continue to grope in the dark for the bottom.

I don't believe this "recession" will end at all, unless we rebuild a real economy that creates real value to replace the phony, illusory capital-and-service economy that a generation of belief in "free market" mythology has created. The new economy must be sustainable and can not be based on the mindless model of never-ending consumption that has been the American way since WWII.

[Phred42]

1. Yep - K& R

:scared:

:grr:

[leftofthedial]

16. America is NOT #1.

America is deep in the "#2."

[dkf]

2. Obama knows this...that is why he wants us to lead in

green energy technology.

We need to start innovating and producing again, instead of simply turning the average US citizen into a consuming machine.

[leftofthedial]

4. I applaud that rhetorical commitment.

But I am deeply troubled by Obama's economic picks. They are committed "free market" true believers. They are competent and successful and part of the problem.

[Justyce]

6. I agree. Obama was a supporter of free trade, and that worries me, but I hope

he sees now how much it's hurting the U.S. and comes up with a better plan.

[leftofthedial]

20. if even one of his leading team members was the least bit forward-looking,

I'd feel better about it.

But the Geithner-Summers crew is all reagan-era supply-side "free-market" high priests.

[barb162]

55. They woudn't be my top picks.

:(

The last thing this country needs is more of this free trade bullshit.

[femrap]

36. More of that horrid

U of Chicago Economics.

[Blue Meany]

3. I agree, we cannot sustain any more credit-driven bubbles, so

we will have to do with less...permanently. Evnironmentally, that can be a good thing and socially it can be too: if we can divide up the work that needs doing more evenly, we might all be able to rediscover leisure time and community. But we will have to do away with the religion of consumerism and the fear of "socialism." If the pie isn't getting any bigger, there is no justification for not dividing it a bit more fairly.

[leftofthedial]

5. yup

but Americans are so trained to be consumers and to hate change and to hate community, that such a conversion seems impossible.

[izquierdista]

10. 60 years of television advertising

With that kind of training, how could they NOT be avid consumers? And with 28 years of Republicans bashing "community" and promoting the "greed is good" meme, such a conversion is effectively dead.

[Cassius23]

11. Well, that's the thing...

For most people I know they like individuals but not "people", or they like their next door neighbor but not "community".

It's a peculiar thing but true more often than not.

[raccoon]

7. K&R nt

[knowbody0]

8. all we have going for us is the ability to grow food

why not capitalize on this and feed the world.

[But....]

9. Farming is in need...

of major changes also:scared: the whole 'factory' farm conceit is poisonous.

[tridim]

12. We can also easily grow medicine, fuel and fiber.

And a relatively safe intoxicant that humans have used for thousands of years.

[leftofthedial]

18. Humping hemp?

[leftofthedial]

17. I think we need to get corporations out of agriculture

their influence there has been even more toxic (literally so) than in finance, manufacturing, etc.

A return to a local, sustainable collective agricultural approach would be a good first step. We will need to worry about feeding ourselves soon. Then we can think about feeding the world.

[Sal Minella]

25. Current Agro-corporate "farming" is the equivalent of mountaintop removal mining. nt

[unblock]

13. recessions ALWAYS involve a restructuring of the economy

a recession is a rough time for a huge chunk of people and institutions in an economy, many of which re-evaluation and reconsider there economic habits, career choices, line of business, etc.

many workers retrain for what looks like a more promising profession.

many companies get rid of old practices that aren't working anymore.

everyone emerges with plans and skills better suited for the future.


this contraction is nothing new in that regard. it just might be a bit more dramatic because it's a long recession, or perhaps it's simply more dramatic because it's the recession we happen to be in right now.

[leftofthedial]

19. unless Obama's talk about building a new green economy turns into something

more meaningful than anyone on his economic team seems likely to do,

there is no "other" to retrain for. there is no basis for a recovery.

[truedelphi]

51. And I am afraid that while we have been distracted by the election

And by waiting for the inauguration, a full 7.7 Trillion bucks will have been loaned out, spent or be needing to set aside for "guarantees" How can a antion recover if her current money supply and future money supply is already GONE? Yuo can only print so much money before that is no longer an option.

I think Obama's team of advisers looks far too conventional to propel us to the level of creative and radical (radical for the good) notions where we need to be

[snappyturtle]

14. I think we might as well face it and realize that we're basically on our own.

I'm not going to look for the government to solve anything. Growth will have to, imho, start at the local level. Instead of looking at Fortune 500 companies why not Fortune 500 communities? I am truly interested in this concept of farmers' markets, swap/barter for services and products, community consignment shops (even if in a garage to start), food co-ops, etc. It may be as isolationist as it comes but I've been screwed enough by corporations. Upthread someone mentioned individuals not liking community.....maybe if we saw the value of the many hands comprising a community these same individuals would change their minds. We can build a better America!

[leftofthedial]

15. I think most people naturally like communities

they've just been brainwashed into a kneejerk rejection of "socialism"

I agree. Local, sustainable, collectivist efforts are needed on a massive scale.

[snappyturtle]

21. In my heart of hearts, I think people like communities too....it's just everybody

is so busy working, kids, etc. that we don't take the time. Well, I think I may have just found something to get engaged in. I am new to this community, actually the entire state, hubby is a native, and I know few people. We've been busy for two years getting our feet back on the ground that maybe now would be a good time to organize a group of interested individuals to brain storm!

[leftofthedial]

23. cool!

I also have an idea for a community collective. I'm not sure how to proceed, but I have a meeting tomorrow with a local nonprofit "incubator." they might have some ideas to help.

[Blue Meany]

27. Local Currency and Local Exchange Trading Systems

can be used to stimulate local economies by offering credit to enterprises that meet a local need and by bringing more people into the "market." Co-ops definitely have to be significant piece of the future economy too. I belong to a food-co-op and am working to start a local energy co-op. I'd really like to see all the necessities of life removed from the for-profit sector.

[snappyturtle]

30. I, too, would like to see all necessities removed from the for-profit sector.

Your energy co-op sounds intriguing! I haven't got a clue about one of them. How do you co-op energy?

[screembloodymurder]

47. Yup, take your money out of stocks and buy tools.

I'm going into the bomb shelter business.

[Warpy]

22. No, it's an imperial BUST

and it's happened before and will happen again.

I'm hoping that Obama will realize that we the people can no longer afford the imperial ambitions of the wealthy and act accordingly, both to trim the excess wealth at the top and the Pentagon budget while engaging in the sort of public works that will start to stimulate demand at the bottom.

Cutting down the military budget is of primary importance. It's the only way we can fund projects for the public good while providing seed money for a new manufacturing infrastructure centered around and producing renewable energy.

The Empire is dead. Let's hope somebody is wise enough to bury it before it buries the rest of us.

[leftofthedial]

24. Gates and Jones and cutting military budgets go together like

Moe and Larry and Albert Einstein.

[ixion]

26. well said... I agree

I've never been a supporter of the concept of US "empire". It seems diametrically opposed to our constitution.

I'm hoping we seize the moment and start innovating and producing again. We also need to dump the so-called 'wars' on terror and drugs.

Failure to do either one of those will result in our continued descent into a corporate theocracy, tyranny and ultimately ruin.

[endarkenment]

32. yup that too

the last 30 years of reaganomics have looted and pillaged our economic system and social infrastructure and we are in a classic imperial bankruptcy as well. Nice pickle.

[bvar22]

28. K&R

You pretty much nailed it.
I m very disappointed in Obama's Economic Transition team. No new ideas there. The people who helped create The Problem are NOT the people that will solve it.

The Democratic Party's support for the No Strings Arttached "Bailout" of the Wall Street CEOs was also depressing, and telegraphs a message of Things to Come.

The American Working Class and The Poor are on their own. A mild "Tax Break" for the Working Class is not going the solve the problems of no good jobs.

[leftofthedial]

29. perhaps being on our own can be liberating

if we all become "community organizers"

[specimenfred1984]

31. It's perfectly OK to "snark" and say "Nut uh" too

Without any justification for the remark as well. We live in a brainwashed, dumbed-down propaganda society of mostly paid-off whores who's intellectual abilities are exhibited here on DU and across America's media daily. Those abilities fully consist of sloganeering and short retorts at a 3rd-grade level. In a country with a population that dumb, it'll be 2-3 years before the majority of the U.S. population can even begin to comprehend your post.

[earth mom]

33. You nailed it. And I think Gore had the best plan which was to focus on renewable energy

which most importantly would help the planet, but also stop our need for foreign oil and put people to work at good paying manufacturing jobs.

I have heard little from Obama about Gores plan.

And I'm alarmed about it because the environment should be at the center of everything Obama is doing right now.

The environment is the key to the very survival of our planet and all of us.

If we screw this up or allow this to be screwed up-we are all history.

[WilliamHenryMee]

38. Al Gore had a lot of this thinking in the 2000 campaign

imagine if we elected him then (which we did ---then the Supreme Court appointed their own boy).

We lost 8 years of competitiveness in the world market. Gore was saying that retooling industry to make green products would make us trillions. Another part of the Bush Legacy ---have SMU file that one in the Bush Library.

[Greyhound]

34. It has aways me that so many people don't seem to notice that our standard

of living has been steadily declining for more than 3 decades. Surely some have seen dramatic increases, but far more have gone down with the overall decline. With the constant pounding of propaganda about how great everything is, it seems everybody just thinks it is only themselves.

We went into the endless "recession" in the 70s and have never come out.
:kick: & R

[leftofthedial]

48. the post-Carter recession never ended?

I don't know if I fully agree. I think 1997-98 was clearly the high water mark for the American nation.

Peace, prosperity, respect--not perfect, but pretty damned good for most people.

Still, that was largely fueled by a bubble. Many of the foundational problems we have now were advanced during the 90's--"free market" nonsense, accelerating concentration of wealth. Clinton ruled basically like a republican and left us the DLC republicans who have successfully, it seems, replaced the Democratic Party with the "nice" wing of the Republican Party, which in turn has essentially become the American Fascist Party.

[femrap]

35. K and R

I agree....the party is so over. And the worst is ahead of us. I would think very seriously about reproducing.

[sofa king]

37. Here's a little bedtime story.

I have a friend, we'll call him Alex, and Alex has a friend named Betty, and Alex lived with a fellow we'll call Charles.

Charles was a house painter, and thanks to the tanking economy, bad weather, and everything else, he ran out of work. Charles, like most Americans, was always only one or two jobs away from wiping out, and so when he went three weeks without work, the game was up. He had to leave town and go live with relatives.

In the meantime, Betty was living in New York City, also lost her job, and also went flat broke before she knew what hit her. Alex, who is a helluva guy, found a job Betty could do in his small town, and invited her to come live with him until she got back on her feet. Between the two of them, Alex and Charles could cover the rent and bills until then.

But Charles went under the same week Betty agreed to come down. Charles couldn't pay the rent on the place and Alex couldn't cover all of it, so now all three of them were facing the prospect of homelessness.

I've already been through all this. I haven't made more than $10,000 in a year for the past three years, but I got lucky and live rent-free with family. Therefore I, the poorest person I currently know besides the dog at my feet, turned out to be the guy who had $150 bucks to lend (and, exactly because I have already been through this before, I was happy to do it). Don't tell Alex and Betty, but I'm not expecting to see that money come back, and I can and will do the same thing next month, too. After that, well, something's gotta break their way, because I'll be tapped out, too.

The interesting thing to me is that because one person hit bottom, he was in danger of dragging two others down with him, and it required a fourth person to intervene, and that fourth person couldn't have done so without the help of still more people, and so on. We're all in this together.

Now, you could pat me on the back and tell me what a great fellow I am, but instead I'll suggest another option: prepare to do the same thing yourself, because it won't be long before someone you know is going to be staring down the barrel of starvation and homelessness. And that is where the myth of free market capitalism is finally going to die, because at the individual level most of us are red-assed socialists who will give everything they have to make sure the people they care about survive, if not prosper. But when we do that, the market will suffer for it.

Well, I say fuck the market. If we don't pull through this with our friends and family in tow, what was the damned point of it all, anyway?

[leftofthedial]

49. That's what I see. I work with at-risk kids (and by extension their families)

and with marginalized young adults.

There is such a widening ripple effect of the economic war that has been waged against the working class and the middle class, that I think the remaining smugly comfortable middle class who still have their corporate jobs would be appalled and then frightened.

[sofa king]

50. You've got a tough job!

I'll bet those risk factors are piling up on each other like flapjacks at a Sunday brunch.

Thank you for doing it.

[bertman]

39. We're about to solidify our designated international role as corporate enforcers.

That has been the aim of the puppet-masters all along. There are lots of other economies that can produce the "things" that we produced and do them cheaper, and in some cases better. But we've got that military-industrial complex thing going on. It's a cancer for sure, but it has a lot of vital parts left to consume before Amerika goes down for the count.

Obama wants to expand our military capabilities. Why? Because we have to be ready to expend our hard-earned tax dollars to keep the peasants down when they decide they're fed up with us stealing THEIR natural resources, children and hope. It's not about protecting Amerika or even our democracy. It's about protecting investments.

So, if you want a job with a future, think military hardware. It's going to be used abroad and at home. There will be great demand, especially when we are "ensuring domestic tranquility" at home and "bringing democracy to peoples around the world".

[CoffeeCat]

42. I was watching some show on the...

...History Channel last night (sorry, I don't remember what was on), and they spelled
out the future. With so many people on the planet, and not enough food or water--the
only way for anyone to survive is by decreasing the population.

The assertion was made that there would be more wars, because people would be fighting over
basic resources--and this was one way to trim down the Earth's population.

If the kingmakers are thinking like this---and more war is their solution, what better way to
ensure that Americans are on board with more war, than by creating complete havoc and economic
disaster here at home?

They'll be able to justify war (or anything else they propose) if our country is collapsing
all around us. People are more malleable when they're afraid.

Remember how people climbed on board with Bush's ideas after 9/11?

We're about to experience an economic 9/11 of our own doing--and I'm sure most American citizens
will be terrified enough to go along with almost anything.

[GliderGuider]

43. The problem with war as a solution is that it's not big enough.

I have no doubt that the number and ferocity of wars -- and our willingness to support and wage them -- will increase over the coming decades. However, consider this:

The global population is growing by 75 million people a year. The death toll of WWII was around 10 million per year. If we had 7 or 8 instances of WWII raging simultaneously on the planet today and every day from now on, their combined direct death toll would simply stop our growth, but would not reduce it.

The knock-on effects of such a war (famine and disease) would probably do the trick, but we could face such effects even without a global war, due to the convergence of oil shortages, ecological devastation, food shortages and economic collapse. The Four Horsemen have always been the most effective controllers of population, but War all by itself isn't enough.

[bertman]

44. I agree with the Four Horsemen, aka known as Mother Nature, as the ultimate arbiter in

this question. Starvation, pestilence, pollution, weather "events" will be the big players.

If the powers-that-be thought wars were the answer to holding down population growth they are showing their usual level of incompetence in anything but controlling the human beans and fleecing them of their currency. My take on it is they found out that war was REALLY good for profits and economic growth (read: Marshall Plan) and only viewed culling the herd as a fringe bennie.

Internal war/civil wars in economically and environmentally ravaged nations could become a major means of trimming the population, but man that is going to be one UGLY MOTHERFUCKER when it goes down.

[northernlights]

54. a nice pandemic or two will do...

1918 influenza pandemic wiped out 10% of the population within a very short time frame. Combine stresses from war, food shortages, and one good pandemic can do a lot.

Also put a lot of people to work digging graves.

Climate change is already triggering re-emergence of some deadly diseases, such as dengue fever and malaria, in unexpected places.

Antibiotic resistance will leave us vulnerable. Forget MRSA. Vancomycin resistance cropped up not long ago, and has already spread to staph. Bacteria spread their resistance genes easily and across species. Evolution in realtime.

Emerging diseases will take care of another chunk. AIDs is back on the rise with a new generation. Who knows what will be the next widespread, unkillable killer -- TSEs?

[etharmon]

40. www.stoptheoutrage.org

Join us in re-wrighting our economic future. To a moral and fiscally responsible future!

www.stoptheoutrage.org

-Evvie

[CoffeeCat]

41. I agree with you 100 percent...

...and I also concur that this is a "ratcheting down of the US economy."

I remember from Econ 101--that basic price or consumer changes, cause movements along the demand
and supply curves . These are normal economic ups and downs.

What you're addressing--and what is clearly happening in our economy--is not simple movements along
the demand curve.

What's happening now, is a complete downward, left shift of the demand curve.





The laws of demand and supply show us our future... Prices will fall and there will be less demand for
everything--from cars to crackers. It's happening as we speak, and the fallout is clear--rising unemployment,
business failures, declining stock market, etc.

For too long, our economy was propped up artificially. People spent money that they didn't have--
using credit cards and raiding their home equity. This is unsustainable for long-term prosperity--but
in the short terms gives quite an illusion of growth. Now, it's all crashing. People are paying
off their credit cards and also the credit-card companies are cutting off lines of credit. Home-equity
loans are harder to obtain.

Our economy was allowed to flourish by encouraging people to spend beyond their income. Combine that
with the housing crash, the price of food, rising unemployment, the national debt, the falling dollar,
the loss of manufacturing jobs, bank failures and iconic business failures (auto makers, airlines, financial
institutions) and the loss of stock-market wealth--and we've got ourselves a perfect economic storm.

[leftofthedial]

45. thanks for the explanation

It's like we've been on steroids. We were pumped up like Superman for a couple of decades. Now our cojones have shriveled, our bones have been breaking and we're passing blood.

[screembloodymurder]

46. Supply-side economics is like pushing on a rope.

It's the biggest crock of shit ever and it's about to blow.

[Knight_errant]

52. Another response

"We have such massive debt that we can no longer service it, much less rebuild."

Are you talking about the government? They could just default on their debt.

"It is clear that unionized labor, which fueled consumerism and created American prosperity post-WWII, is not coming back."

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. Unionized labor did none of those things.

"I don't believe this "recession" will end at all, unless we rebuild a real economy that creates real value to replace the phony, illusory capital-and-service economy that a generation of belief in "free market" mythology has created. The new economy must be sustainable and can not be based on the mindless model of never-ending consumption that has been the American way since WWII. "

LOL.

[leftofthedial]

53. and another

LOL

LOL

LOL

20 posts. hmm.