It's already a day of records. It may get worse before the sun appears over the wall of jungle to the East of me. Gold went through $1030 in Hong Kong this morning and the collapse of Bear Stearns along with another cut in the discount rate has stocks falling worldwide. The DJIA is set to open down over 200 points and the Dollar has fallen to record levels against the Euro.
It's a "rough patch" indeed and the latest New York Manufacturing Index figures shows that we're not seeing a slowdown but an outright decline. Of course the official position seems to be that it's our fault because we aren't buying enough stuff and because we're not patriotic enough, we've lost confidence. Paulson seemed to be tripping over his tongue yesterday trying to use the word "confidence" in his interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. What is there to be confident in? Our leadership? Our impending exit from this crippling exercise in nation building? The end to profligate spending, borrowing and revenue reduction?
Sorry, with the media hyping every nuance of every syllable into a fierce and bloody battle; with the presumption of the pundits that another Republican with similar inflexible and dogmatic beliefs has an excellent chance of election, who can have the slightest confidence?
Yes, yes, some anonymous commenter will tell me it's all the Liberals and the Clintons and the war on Christmas and gay marriage and that the Democrats tax and spend and that I'm making things worse by talking down the economy. Take their advice, be confident. Go to Wal-mart and spend. Borrow some more money. Elect another puppet president. I've got mine and who cares about you anyway?
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3 comments:
It is way past time for folks to shovel their way through all the bullshit and take a look at the situation as it actually is rather than through glasses manufactured by greedy corporations and politicians with their heads up their collective asses.
This has been a long time in the making and there is more than enough blame to go around.
We didn't even bother to sell our soul. We simply gave it away. To Haliburton.
It's not as though nobody saw it coming although there are plenty of people armed with facts and figures who argue that this is all a normal economic cycle and has nothing to do with Bush, although it might have something to do with Clinton. One guy I just read blames it on 9/11 and claims we're all doing better economically now than 35 years ago.
It's getting to the point where I can't even listen to the prophets and prognosticators and apologists and gurus and experts. Nobody knows anything.
Why aren't our Democratic candidates simply asking: "Are you better off now than you were 8 years ago?" If they don't, we're going to wind up with another Republican.
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