Posted on 09/15/2008 11:50:36 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
The U.S. economy ex-distortion (Kevin Phillips)
“The real numbers, to most economically minded Americans, would be a face full of cold water. Based on the criteria in place a quarter century ago, today’s U.S. unemployment rate is somewhere between 9 percent and 12 percent; the inflation rate is as high as 7 or even 10 percent; economic growth since the recession of 2001 has been mediocre, despite a huge surge in the wealth and incomes of the superrich, and we are falling back into recession. If what we have been sold in recent years has been delusional “Pollyanna Creep,” what we really need today is a picture of our economy ex-distortion. For what it would reveal is a nation in deep difficulty not just domestically but globally.
Undermeasurement of inflation, in particular, hangs over our heads like a guillotine. To acknowledge it would send interest rates climbing, and thereby would endanger the viability of the massive buildup of public and private debt (from less than $11 trillion in 1987 to $49 trillion last year) that props up the American economy. Moreover, the rising cost of pensions, benefits, borrowing, and interest payments—all indexed or related to inflation—could join with the cost of financial bailouts to overwhelm the federal budget. As inflation and interest rates have been kept artificially suppressed, the United States has been indentured to its volatile financial sector, with its predilection for leverage and risky buccaneering.”
Read more at http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/05/00820
Excuse me Nancy, but I don’t see minority leader in your title. Where’s the investigation? Let’s see whose policies led to this. Let’s hear how Gorelick amongst other RAT leaders of Freddie and Fanny managed the “independent” business.
Keep it up, I hope you’ll like a little asterisk next to your name in the history books. Stating how she only served ONE TERM as speaker of the house...
This started years ago and its failed Democrat policy at the core. Someone needs to be smart and throw this back in her face. Pelosi is no more than a puppet. a stuffed idiot.
I should point out that since the democrats have taken control of congress the economy has tanked. Statistics prove that two years ago the US economy was going just fine?
I e-mailed the brilliant speaker your comments. Hope you don’t mind
That would be a recipe for the DJIA to drop below 6,000 as investors flee the USA. We would end up seeing a late 1970's style very deep recession at best, a repeat of the Great Depression at worst.
Nancy Bellicosi needs to explain to us why Americans who happen to be Democrats aren’t complicit in the greedy housing speculation binge that is now unraveling?
The blind leading the blind.
She also still believes that gov’t “creates jobs.” When you create a gov’t job, you destroy a job somewhere else via taxing businesses & people so that less people are hired in the private sector. Private sector businesses pays taxes.
Net-net it’s zero jobs created.
I agree with the Treasury's decision to not bale out Lehman Bro.s and Merril Lynch. Let the market and money follow common sense rather than political short term aims. Some will fail and lose money, the rest of us taxpayers should not be fund financial excess or stupidity.
the Democrats will destroy the country of they have to. Look what they have done in just 2 short years. Why are Republicans not the advantage on this issue?
Someone needs to stick a nickle on her needle
Those fat cats making 22 million a year would be a good start, and then the 400+ members of congress would be second.
I agree. Not sure why we don’t see this in all sorts of ads: Just about everything was better two years ago before the dems took congress.
hey nancy, how about this; WHO RAN THE MAJORITY IN CONGRSS
Typical Democrat. Cause a problem and then blame a Republican for it.
“The New Direction Congress passed...
Congress has passed fewest number of bills in two decades
"The 110th Congress, whose term officially ends in January, hasn't passed any spending bills or attacked high gasoline prices. But it has used its powers to celebrate watermelons and to decree the origins of the word "baseball."
Barring a burst of legislative activity after Labor Day, this group of 535 men and women will have accomplished a rare feat. In two decades of record keeping, no sitting Congress has passed fewer public laws at this point in the session -- 294 so far -- than this one. That's not to say they've been idle. On the flip side, no Congress in the same 20 years has been so prolific when it comes to proposing resolutions -- more than 1,900, according to a tally by the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense..."
The Do Nothing Democrat Congress.
And here, I thought the Dodo was extinct!
“Millions of Americans are feeling the pain of eight years of disastrous economic policies – job losses, foreclosed homes, reduced home values, eroded pensions, high gas prices and compromised financial futures. We cannot allow the economic policy failures of the Bush Administration to continue... “Eight years of weakened regulation of our nation’s financial system – including a failure to regulate risky, and often predatory, lending practices – by the Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress have led us to this point,Reality to 9% Nan - HELLO, anyone home? You and your fellow dems under Billy Jeffs reign, along with the race hustling poverty pimps, created the housing, loan and banking fiasco. And if I was YOU, 9% Nan, I wouldn't go near 'gas prices'.
Now you know why you see people in an Insane Asylum smiling all the time. Like 9% Nan's above ramblings, they're completely delusional, detached from reality, and exist in some alternate universe.
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