Open Left

Oh, you're not wrong at all... sadly. (4.00 / 5)

Consumers accounted for 70% of GDP, but they're down for the count for the foreseeable future. The housing crisis won't abate until after the 2012 round of recasts on garbage paper no one will be able to afford. So housing prices and CRE will continue to plummet until then.

Couple that with shrinking employment, hours and wages and it's only worse. Add in Obama's planned privatizing Social Security (which should already be DOA, but probably isn't) and who knows what he's going to do with Medicare... and the social safety net, what's left of it, is in doubt... and with it, the very legitimacy of government.

I have yet to hear from the "Green Shoots" people just where they think the recovery is going to come from. Banking is the only real possibility, it seems to me, thanks to the unwitting generosity of a couple generations of future taxpayers. It won't come from manufacturing. It won't come from consumption or credit.

While the neo-liberal Masters of the Universe are currently pleased with their success in convincing low-information voters that stimulus is too expensive, this will not last as the U3 and U6 climb into the stratosphere. Add in the additional loss of healthcare that will go along with that, exhaustion of unemployment bennies and I'd say a backlash is going to happen at some point.

While Obama didn't cause this mess, he's only making it worse and he has to own that. Ditto for those in congress who've clapped loudly at all this stupidity.

One thing is certain: The future ain't what it used to be.

"In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State" -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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by: Emocrat @ Fri Jun 26, 2009 at 12:23:20 PM CDT

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