Production requires investment. People will not invest if they are worried about government takeovers, quickly changing regulations and high taxes. It is too chaotic an atmosphere for anyone to want to invst in anything. This is what happened in the 30’s when FDR assaulted capitalism.
I keep saying there will be no recovery w/o employment, no consumer spending w/o employment and this xmas holiday shopping season is gonna be bad, really bad... many more businesses will fail after the dead retail season, resulting in more unemployment.
Our economic perspective has been turned upside-down over the past few decades. Perhaps we will have to get knocked back to a barter economy for people to get their heads out of their butts.
Moving paper around does not create wealth. Trading the same ragged dollar around the table for personal services does not create wealth. Even investing another ragged dollar for others to pass around the table does not create wealth.
Of economic resources, there is land, labor, and capital. From the land comes minerals, timber, crops, livestock, etc., which labor turns into saleable items, some for consumption, some for further stages of production. Consumers purchase these output either for their personal use or as inputs into further production. These processes operate with or without outside capital infusion; however, once production and consumption are perpetual and growing, outside capital infusion can be applied to more efficiently balance supply and demand.
Investment of and by itself, and disregarding consumption, distribution, and production, is simply gambling with phantoms.
I think we’re way past the “investment” stage; many people have nothing to invest.I think if you look at coverage of the economy up until about six months ago, you ha a lot more candor; the media has since probably faced a lot of pressure to be more upbeat, if only to try to stimulate some spending by those who had anything saved and head off violence by those who didn’t. One woman, talking about how people were cutting back, making changes, etc., when asked how long she thought this would continue, calmly stated that this was in fact the “new normal”, and was never going to go back. Another gentleman (on a different program) stated that in this new reality, a status symbol was going to be having a job. I believe they were both dead-on, but Nobody says these things anymore.