Guardian-Americans living on borrowed time

[LiviaOlivia]

Americans living on borrowed time

In the first of a three-part series Larry Elliott and David Teather explore the economic recovery that never was

Monday October 25, 2004
The Guardian

Oil prices are heading for $60 a barrel. Motorists in the United States are getting their heads round the idea of paying $2 for a gallon of gas. Eighteen months after the ousting of Saddam Hussein was supposed to put the skids under the cost of crude, you might imagine America's reliance on imported fuel would be a crucial issue in the race for the White House. It isn't. America is racking up trade deficits of $50bn a month and anger is growing out in the industrial heartlands about China's refusal to revalue its currency. Yet trade policy is a peripheral issue as George Bush and John Kerry enter the last week of campaigning.

You have to go back as far as Herbert Hoover to find a president with a worse record on jobs than the incumbent and poverty is on the increase in the world's largest economy. The stock market, which boomed under Clinton, suffered under Bush as a result of the dotcom boom's collapse, recession and a string of corporate scandals, as the chart above shows. Yet, if you listen to the candidates and monitor the media, jobs are not the real issue.

What matters in this election is the fitness or otherwise of Bush or Kerry to be commander in chief. It is about who has the "right stuff", who can best defend the American homeland from terrorism, who can be trusted with national security.

By his attacks on Kerry's integrity, Bush has avoided the problem his father faced when Bill Clinton persuaded voters that the economy was what mattered, not the victory over Saddam in the first Gulf war. If there was ever an election where "it's the economy, stupid" mattered, then this should be it. But that is not the case. As Mark Granakis, a branch president of the steelworkers' union in Ohio, puts it: "Franklin Roosevelt told us the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. This president says: 'Be afraid'."

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1335120,00.html

[mhr]

1. Unemployed 53 Months, Over 2,500 Resumes Out The Door

CV Includes:

BSEE
MBA
Commercial Pilot
Honorably Discharged Naval Officer

Nary a speck of interest from any company.

All thanks to the disaster that is Bush.

[napi21]

2. Why do I hate it so much that the Brits understand so much more than

half of the American people do? I don't hate the Brits, I hate the American people who can't seem to see what's real!

[The Zanti Regent]

5. Millions of Americans are brainwashed by Jesus TV

Yes the Rapture is coming in a week or 2 and Jesus is coming to take you away. We don't care about the debt, hell no and for Oil, hey, when Jesus comes back, he'll make ALL THE OIL YOU NEED AMEN!

[camero]

3. Seems militarism has swept American society

Like Germany. Come Nov. 2 we'll see how this plays out. Word on the street is about the economy though neither the candidates nor pundits want to talk about it.

[AndyTiedye]

4. But Bush is the Second Coming...