from HuffPost:
Hale "Bonddad" Stewart
Posted September 15, 2008 | 10:04 AM (EST)
From One Disaster To Another This has been one hell of a weekend. On Friday night my wife and I were in Houston, Texas. We survived Ike intact; I'm fine, Mr$. Bonddad is fine, all three dogs are fine and the house is fine. However, I am currently in Austin, Texas for the week.
Then I wake up and find out Lehman and Merrill Lynch are no longer going concerns on Wall Street. And this is a few weeks after the "free market" U.S. nationalizes its mortgage industry.
Let's back up a bit and see how we got here. Advance warning: this will be long and fairly complicated, so get a cup of coffee now (actually, get the pot ready).
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article titled, "An extended shallow near recession." This was a riff off a comment made by one of the people who writes at Angry Bear. The point is this expansion has not felt like a real expansion. Job growth has been the weakest of any expansion since 1960. Real median household income is now at the same level it was in 2001. (Please see The Bush Boom Was A Complete Bust.) Combined these elements tell us the economy is doing very poorly. These two points also tell us there is at least one fundamental problem with the economy if not more. .....(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart/from-one-disaster-to-anot_b_126442.html