Just because one team sucks doesn't mean the whole league folds...
Posted on 05/18/2008 11:19:43 AM PDT by neverdem
Back in August, during the panic over mortgages, Alan Greenspan offered reassurance to an anxious public. The current turmoil, the former Federal Reserve Board chairman said, strongly resembled brief financial scares such as the Russian debt crisis of 1998 or the U.S. stock market crash of 1987. Not to worry.
But in the background, one could hear the groans and feel the tremors as larger political and economic tectonic plates collided. Nine months later, Greenspan's soothing analogies no longer wash. The U.S. economy faces unprecedented debt levels, soaring commodity prices and sliding home prices, to say nothing of a weak dollar. Despite the recent stabilization of the economy, some economists fear that the world will soon face the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s.
That analogy is hardly a perfect fit; there's almost no chance of another sequence like the Great Depression, where the stock market dove 80 percent, joblessness reached 25 percent, and the Great Plains became a dustbowl that forced hundreds of thousands of "Okies" to flee to California. But Americans should worry that the current unrest betokens the sort of global upheaval that upended previous leading world economic powers, most notably Britain.
More than 80 percent of Americans now say that we are on the wrong track, but many if not most still believe that the history of other nations is irrelevant -- that the United States is unique, chosen by God...
--snip--
In the United States, the financial services sector passed manufacturing as a component of the GDP in the mid-1990s. But market enthusiasm seems to have blocked any debate over this worrying change: In the 1970s, manufacturing occupied 25 percent of GDP and financial services just 12 percent, but by 2003-06, finance enjoyed 20-21 percent, and manufacturing had shriveled to 12 percent...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Can’t disagree there.
Drill in Alaska for starters.
I remember seeing Paul Craig Roberts on Lou Dobbs (It was on at the gym) and PCR was complaining about the fact that since people in the eastern bloc were free this was bad because they were now economic competitors against the US.
I guess PCR didn’t bother to study Adam Smith.
Ironic thing about this title. This idea applies more to him Buchannan, Vinege, Roberts and the rest of the old Dinocons then the USA as a whole. All the old Nixon era titans certainly have collapsed.
George S Patton. Someone needs to tell these Conservatives "Man up or go home".
LOL Winged monkeys might fly out of economists butts and then what would we do?
I find it amazing that people who lived thru the 1970s think this little slow down in the Economy is “hard times”. Think someone of you need a wake up call. You had it far too good for far too long. You have forgotten what the real world is like
This isn't about politics; it's about economics, in particular this consumer driven economy that staring to look like the emperor with no clothes.
This isn't about politics; it's about economics, in particular this consumer driven economy that's starting to look like the emperor with no clothes.
Don't rely just on the spell checker.
the US is not an “old titan.”
Just because one team sucks doesn't mean the whole league folds...
Good post. It’s all about the Cassandras and their wailing chorus in the press trying to relive the hysteria of the 1970s.
They’re wrong again.
They’re wrong again.
Unless Obama gets eleced.
The nation's first black Jimmy Carter.
Oops, broke my promise. Make that Dhimmi Carter.
Cheers!
Veddy interesting. But shtupid. Somehow this last year the lame US economy became the world's largest exporter again, surpassing upstart Germany.
Gee, I don't know where the "economic miracle" China ranked, but that ominous behemoth just didn't make it to the awards ceremony.
Well, I agree with you about China. It’s growing by leaps and bounds and sucking in raw materials like a vacuum cleaner. But the economy is so unbalanced and command-driven and polluted that at some point it’s all going to come crashing down.
Just my opinion.
And it doesn’t excuse what our governments over the years have done to undermine our economy in order to favor their campaign donors.
We were.
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