The Disaster Yet To Come.

[kentuck]

Yes, everyone is scared shitless of the swine flu epidemic. The fear is much worse than the flu, at the moment. Still others are worried that the banks will go under and our entire system will collapse and we will all lose our 401K's that we have shackled to the stock market. Most folks feel they have no choice but to support the President and our Treasury Secretary and the Fed.

But the real disaster is yet to come. The worst fears are still in waiting. It is the fear of millions more losing their jobs. Another year of losing 500,000 jobs per month will create a panic unlike any we have seen in some time. It will occupy the "news" networks 24/7 when it hits. There is no indication that we will recover from this recession/depression any time soon.

General Motors has just announced that they will lay-off another 21,000 employees. But, it is much more than that. It will impact every community across America. It will affect car salesmen, mechanics, truckdrivers, businesses, janitors, etc... It will have a major impact on the rest of our economy, which is already staggering from the poor economy.

States will be struggling to pay unemployment insurance and many will be forced to create jobs for the long-term unemployed. The banks have a very small part to play in the recovery. It will have to come from the bottom up. Workers have to make enough money to spend or we will be in this mess forever. The businesses and corporations will have to decide whether they want to create more jobs or whether they want to pay more taxes. That is the future of business in America. They may decide to take their businesses elsewhere?

When the unemployment rate hits 10%, the realization will come. We are in a free fall and there is no solution on the table. The demands for change will be great. When people are hungry and their families are threatened with no roof over their heads, then people should be fearful.

[babylonsister]

1. There is a partial solution. It's called the stimulus which has been

passed and needs to be spent on things like jobs while improving every state. Some states are already realizing benefits.

[Justyce]

3. The stimulus isn't going to provide enough longterm employment

alone for recovery. We have to do something about the offshoring problem.

[babylonsister]

4. That's being addressed also, though slowly...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3851210

If you're looking for a quick fix, there isn't one.

And I beg to differ, RE: the stimulus. When some of these projects get going, many people will be employed for quite awhile. Cross-country high speed rail isn't going to happen in a month or two, and that's just one example.

The sky doesn't have to be falling.

[kentuck]

5. As Harry Hopkins said to Herbert Hoover...

When Hoover told the nation to wait a year or two and everything would be better, Hopkins reportedly said, "that people don't eat every year or two, they eat every day..."

[babylonsister]

7. Fine. For you, the sky is falling.

I just never understand the gist of posts full of doom and gloom with no solutions. :shrug:

[Justyce]

8. I don't think it's "doom and gloom" as much as

concern & compassion for others who are out of work, soon to be out of work, losing their homes, children going hungry, etc. That's a reality and one many of us would certainly not like to see keep increasing, so I think it's a good thing that people are concerned & upset & keeping pressure on the administration to keep plugging away at this mountain of urgent problems.

[kentuck]

9. The sky is not falling..

But the rose-colored glasses do not change the reality. We are not going to get out of this mess anytime soon. Unemployment is going to continue to climb. There are major obstacles when that happens. We can stick our heads in the sand or we can prepare ourselves with the truth.

[babylonsister]

10. Here's some reality for you a DUer just posted. Check it out!

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/foundationforchange

[kentuck]

12. Don't get me wrong.

I support our President and I think he is doing the very best he can under the circumstances. However, I think we are still headed for the disaster with unemployment and lack of jobs. Actually, I don't think anyone could do a better job overall than President Obama, even though I disagree with him on some positions. That is why I continue to speak up.

[KillCapitalism]

2. K&R

We will lose more jobs by the end of today than the Swine flu will kill altogether.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. There will be no "recovery". The best we can hope for is a slow decline in living standards.

Our economy is propped up only by borrowed paper without any backing but the strength of the foreign economies backing the paper. And, the only reason the Chinese are continuing to loan us the money to prop it up is because they have so much of it.

In the meantime, they are quietly spending the "strong dollars" they have buying up real stuff like mineral rights, oil contracts and real property around the world.

When, and if, the "recovery" begins the people going back to work will find lower wages are being offered because we (as a country) can't afford to pay them the wages paid a year ago.

It's going to be a long, deep, recession followed by lower real wages with a mountain of debt still to be paid. And, that's if we're lucky enough to avoid hyperinflation when the value of the dollar drops.

[Mari333]

11. excellent post, right on as usual

the corporate powers have every admin in their grasp. I have not heard a peep about outsourcing ending, and I doubt I will. the standard of living in the USA is falling and will continue to fall. The multi nationals are getting their way, they will have nothing but slave labour left to make them wealthy, and that includes US citizens.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. The elephant in the room.

The corporations can't stop outsourcing because if they don't outsource they will die. The ugly truth is that labor is cheaper in other countries and we've priced ourselves out of the market for labor. We can scream all day about how unfair it is, but it's just a fact. The trouble with the call for a "level playing field" is that the Chinese, Indians, Koreans, have no incentive to raise wages significantly, let alone to American levels. And, we can't make them, despite the cries of outrage.

Their economies thrive because of cheap labor. They aren't about to destroy their economies to save ours. And, if we try to make them by imposing trade restrictions like tariffs on their goods, they hold the sledgehammer of cutting off the loans that hold our economy together..such as it is.

I read a thesis on the internet about a year ago, before the collapse, saying that we really should bypass the government and deal directly with the real bosses, the corporations. Negotiate, strike, boycott, and skip the middlemen that the politicians are.

Worth thinking about.

[blindpig]

26. Indeed

'The business of America is business', the only way to get the attention of the real power is to dam the money river. It will not be easy, it will probably cause hardship, but we have little choice other than to continue to endure a situation of spiraling decline. Mass mobilization, general strike, is our only good option. We need to get up to speed, fast.

[The2ndWheel]

17. "The multi nationals are getting their way"

That's where the corporations are strongest. They're multi-national, and governments are not. There are a few hundred regional governments all acting in their own interests. The corporations can play them against each other, because the monopoly which gives government such power does not exist on a global scale.

[Winterblues]

13. "It will have to come from the bottom up."

I wish someone would tell all those super stars in the Treasury Dept that....They are still trying to empty the US treasury into the banker's hands...

[Fire1]

15. And BOA needs MORE!! Per msnbc, today.

[smoogatz]

14. You have to have a functioning banking system.

There are different ways of insuring that we have one, including nationalization, but without functioning banks you're basically on the barter system. One of the things that happened at the onset of the Great Depression was that the banking system essentially shut down: a lot of banks were insolvent, and the ones that weren't were often the victims of bank runs which essentially bankrupted them. Recovery was slowed significantly by the fact that the banking system had been allowed to collapse by the Hoover administration: before the industrial base could get up and running again, the banking system had to be at least partially restored. So, horse->cart. But yeah, we have to start making stuff again--and it has to be stuff that people actually want/need. Green revolution, baby!

[kentuck]

19. This seems to be the gist of the problem?

Will our entire banking system collapse if CitiGroup or BofA go under? Can we not prop up the rest of the system to where it will function without the zombies?

[smoogatz]

20. I think nationalization would have been the best solution.

Nationalize the big boys temporarily, kick out the boards/officers, do thorough, rigorous audits, prosecute the obvious fraud, zero out the shareholders, keep the loans flowing, then sell off the working pieces when you're done. What they're doing now is just a continuation of the shell-game that got us here. A big mistake, IMO.

[kentuck]

21. Isn't this what Reich and Krugman have stated also?

A temporary nationalization to get rid of the crap?

[smoogatz]

22. Yep. And Roubini.

I've been reading Atrios on this subject (and the real estate meltdown) for some months/years now. Worth a look, if you get a chance.

[L0oniX]

18. The out sourcing is killing us too. Moving out of the country to get a job is next.

[OneBlueSky]

23. here in the lower Hudson Valley, stores are closing right and left . . .

virtually every small to mid-size shopping center has multiple new vacancies, often as many as 50% of its stores and frequently including the largest ("anchor") store . . .

today I went out to buy some flea and tick treatment for my canine companion only to find that the local pet supply store was no more . . . no warning, no nothing, just gone . . . seems that every week one store or another closes down, and no one is rushing in to fill the spaces they're vacating . . .

even the signage is getting desperate, suggesting it won't be long before owners are no longer be willing to support shopping centers that are costing them more to maintain than they're bringing in in rents . . . I can envision many of these places being bulldozed and made into parking lots (or just vacant lots) if things don't improve soon . . .

[Fumesucker]

24. Bulldozing cost money..

The buildings will most likely sit empty, we've got several around here that have been empty for years.

[IDemo]

25. When unemployment hits 10% ?

The real world figure is well above that already:

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached
workers, plus total employed part time for
economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian
labor force plus all marginally attached workers - (Mar 2009) 15.6

NOTE: Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and
are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached,
have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those
who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. For more information, see "BLS
introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures," in the October 1995 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. Updated population
controls are introduced annually with the release of January data.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm