Can you handle the truth ??

[kentuck]

The truth is that nobody knows what the hell to do? Not the Treasury Dept. Not Congress. Not the editorial writers in the NY Times. Not the Democrats. Not the Republicans. And not the President of the United States. We are up Shit Creek without a paddle.

Democrats are calling for a stimulus. Republicans are calling for more taxcuts. All the others are calling for more time. Meanwhile, another half-million lose their jobs. The stock market continues its decline. And the banks still refuse to loan money or people simply do not wish to borrow. Nobody knows what to do about this problem?

We are bankrupt. We are bankrupt of ideas and we are economically bankrupt. We are stuck in the quicksand of inaction. Nothing good is on the immediate horizon.

[driver8]

1. You are absolutely right. Nobody has a clue as to what to do, now.

Everyone has these ideas, but no one knows if they will work.

I think the problems are much deeper than what we are seeing, and it is going to take a long, long time to get us back to some sense of things being "normal."

This country has been living high on the hog for too long and now it is time to pay up. Things are going to get very painful before they get better.

[Lost4words]

2. Agreed. In Albuquerque some banks are getting robbed twice a day!

cant say I blame them.

[tekisui]

5. Here is NC, a gas station was robbed, and the robber

kept apologizing. He kept saying he was sorry, but had to get money to feed his family. Not that its excused, but I believed him.

[Lost4words]

7. me too, yet Bernie Maddoff stole Billions from thousands and he

gets kid glove treatment, the popr guy stealing fro food will do time no doubt. But not if I am on the jury! GDit!

[tekisui]

3. We are in a downward spiral.

Each day it gets worse as more and more join the ranks of the proletariat.

[Lost4words]

4. Looks like the uber rich are winning the class war to me. nt

[tekisui]

6. The Capitalist Free Market System crashing again.

When we will learn that this doesn't work?

[HamdenRice]

8. Actually we know exactly what to do. It's as simple as algebra.

That's what has people like Krugman so irate. We learned a lot from the Great Depression and Keynes. There is almost no doubt about what to do. We have to rebalance this forumula:

AD = C + I + G + (X-M)

The problem isn't that we don't know what to do. It's that the repugs don't want the Democrats to succeed. They want the country to crash and burn because (1) they are as ideologically opposed to Keynesian fiscal stimulus as they are to evolution and (2) they figure if the country collapses economically, they might get elected in 2010.

It's not that we don't know what to do; it's whether we have the political will to do it.

[SammyWinstonJack]

9. Sounds right. nt

[stillcool]

10. oops...

[nancyr]

11. I agree with you.

Seems like a pack of chickens running around with their heads cut off: no-one seems to have a clue.

[stillcool]

12. Fear and Greed..the staples of...

American life. Too afraid to make a decision. Too afraid to advocate for a decision unless we are absolutely 100% guaranteed of a certain result. Too afraid the result might be that someone other than ourselves will get a bigger piece of the pie. It is not even important that we understand what the problem is or the solution offered. As long as someone says one fraction of an aspect of a proposed solution sucks, we are more than willing to rally against it. Doesn't matter if it's true, or grounded in logic. As long as the chords of fear and greed can be stoked, the American people will respond to the touch.

[Ron Green]

13. Here's the truth you won't hear from any politician or TV talking head:

Our way of life is not sustainable, nor has been for the past hundred years. Unless we are able and WILLING to roll back our industrialized eating, traveling and dwelling models to a point more in line with the rest of the world, the only way we're going to keep on being "Americans" is by the force of our military.

[cliffordu]

14. You are exactly right.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Yup. "Levelling the Playing Field" is going to painful and unavoidable.

[dysfunctional press]

15. they know what has to be done...but they don't have the courage to do it.

nationalize the banks, single-payer healthcare, an 'apollo' type program to get rid of internal combustion engines in a decade.

for starters.

but nobody in "power' has the BALLS to stand up to the uber-rich overlords.

[cherokeeprogressive]

16. The truth is that the US no longer has an economy based on the manufacture of durable goods.

Stimulate all you want. I'm told that unemployment numbers are purposefully deflated. True unemployment figures are more along the lines of 10% right now, and rising by the day. That's 30 million people. Add another three million for each percentage point. Out of work. 30 million+. Infrastructure projects, smoking cessation programs, honey bee research and hundreds of millions for the movie industry aren't gonna fix THAT. Only manufacturing jobs will.

The stimulus package is but a temporary fix at best. What are we trying to do here? We're trying to restart American style consumerism, which has run out of gas. Well, we put gas in the tank. 700 billion dollars worth. It was called TARP. No joy. Now the battery is dead and we are thinking that a TRILLION dollars is what a new one will cost, and strangely, we're not worried about it one bit. Write a check. Who cares if it bounces?

Let's say we actually FUND infrastructure work to the tune of a few million workers. What will they do when the new deal type projects are finished? Go to work in toaster factories? Go to work making televisions, cell phones, cars, clothing, or other such goods? Nope. We don't make stuff like that here. We haven't in a long time. Those things are made cheaper in other countries. Okay, we do make cars here, but the consensus is that they're shit, cost too much, and don't get enough miles per gallon to be wasting our time on. Buy German! Buy Japanese! For fuck's sake, buy Korean!

So we stimulate American style consumerism, which is pretty much universally held to be the cause of most of the world's ills. Let's say we even succeed. A new wave of credit spending and an orgy of buying things we don't need ensues. When the money runs out because the infrastructure projects are completed, what then? Hey! Is that the CEO of a major retailer over there counting his bonus money...? TAX THE FUCKER! Tax him and everyone like him!

American style consumerism is like a 60 year old car with 700 billion dollars worth of gas and a trillion dollar battery, but the same tires it was sold to us with. Guess what? They're going flat. Even if we DO buy new Michelins for it, the money goes offshore, and soon the timing chain is going to break. Well I guess two trillion dollars for a new timing chain ain't bad... but what do we do when the transmission goes south?

American style consumerism is dead. It drove the world to the place it's in today, and now it's dead. People need to get their minds around that fact, and think about what will replace it. Maybe we CAN go back to an economy based on manufacturing. Maybe we'll start manufacturing goods for economies that are just waking up, like China and India. Maybe we can be THEIR source of cheap labor.

Truth? The truth ISN'T found in the idea that putting 600 million dollars worth of hybrid cars under the asses of as many government workers as possible will fix the problem, long term OR short.