AMERICA IN SURVIVAL MODE

That the worst is yet to come is the “good news” according to many of America’s leading economic experts. The bad news for American consumers, lenders, retailers and major employers is that America is sliding into a Great Depression and that the apsirations have to come down if we are to survive this, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1929.
Since the Ronald Regan years Americans have been living fat on the hog, borrowing to send their kids to expensive private schools and Ivy-League colleges. Americans have been borrowing to buy a home or a vacation home, buy a new car, borrowing to remodel an older home, going to the Mall and buying expensive electronics, video-gaming systems, eating out at expensive restaurants, the “daily-cup” of Starbucks.
The unraveling of an economy built on debt-fueled spending will be painful for years to come and the US economy clearly in a major recession if not a depression, means the end of rampant consumerism. Americans are in survival mode

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Crossing my fingers and holding my breath

key lawmakers announced agreement Wednesday on a $789 billion economic stimulus measure designed to create millions of jobs in a nation reeling from recession.

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Playing a catastrophic game of chicken

As of this morning, (February 10, 2009) this is the kind of America we live in.

We live in an America in which the Republican party is willing to allow the country to go down the drain for its own short-term political gain. Here is the potentially catastrophic game of chicken the Republicans are playing: They want to force enough compromises in the stimulus bill — which is already not bold enough – to make it too weak to succeed. Then, having negotiated these compromises, they won’t even vote for it — which will allow them to run against the “collapsed Democratic economy” in 2010. and try and regain the White House in 2012.

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