About That Flushing Sound
Update: Associated Press report: unemployment rises to 5% and only 18,000 jobs added in December.
Oil is at $100 per barrel; gold is at $860 per ounce; the dollar is in the tank; the stock market hasn’t even kept up with inflation for the last 7 years. There aren’t enough jobs added every month to cover new workers entering the market, much less employ people who have been laid off. Bread is $2.50 per loaf, milk is $5 per gallon, and gasoline over $3 per gallon.
More and more people are losing their homes and falling behind on their other debt payments, as the financial games of the banks are exposed, along with the total failure of the government and Federal Reserve to regulate.
More than 3900 American service members have died in the total disaster that is Iraq, while Afghanistan is on the verge of collapse, and Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country, is at risk of chaos.
This is what happens when you give the keys of government to the Republicans. If we climb out of this swamp, everyone has an obligation to remember that fact and teach it to each new generation – no compromise, no exception, no quarter.
12 comments
“About That Flushing Sound” – Bryan
And I thought Flushing was only in NY. Obviously the GOPers have managed to spread the misery around to everybody.
If my personal “fortune” (heh) …. carefully and cautiously built over decades… goes down the toilet, I’ll know which party to blame.
But I thought war was supposed to be good for the economy!
Heresy!
Republicans are better for the economy, better for the troops, better for snuggling up to oil despots and wrangling the best deals, better for minorities, better for defending the poor, and better for protecting investors!!!
Silly boy.
/snark
Hey, but the top 1% of the population is much better off today than 7 years ago…and just look at executive salaries and oil company profits…you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Obviously the top 1% are investing in oil, gold, and Euros, because nothing else is paying off. With a liquidity crisis the rate paid for savings is contemptible and unrealistic. The banks are hellbent on “inflating” their way out of debt.
Yes, Michael, the Republicans have even managed to make war a loser for the economy. Amazingly talented group. They only groups who seem to profit are the corporations and cronies.
Abraham Lincoln was last Republican President who actually supported the troops. Since then, Republicans have supported the military-industrial complex and claimed it was for the troops.
Normally fascism comes as a result of financial crisis, this time they reversed the process.
All the better for turning the “soft” police state we currently have (where the iron fist of the State is carefully cloaked in layers of velvet to hide its nature) into the real thing, doncha think? Destroy the economy, get people desperate, people will even turn to thugs like Saddam Hussein as their savior as Iraq proved back in the 1990’s when the U.S. insured that Saddam would stay in power by bombing the Iraqi economy into rubble in ’92/93.
PS — if you look at the real unemployment rate reported using OECD definitions of under/unemployment (e.g. including unemployed engineers who are currently saying “will there be fries with that sir?” while looking for a job in their real field), it’s now above 12%. The “5%” unemployment rate is the “fudged” statistic that’s used to lie to the American public. The “real” unemployment rate *had* dropped to below 10% at one point in the recent past, but it’s shooting up far faster than even the fudged one.
– Badtux the How-to-lie-with-statistics Penguin
When you throw in all the people who have just stopped looking and have moved into the underground economy, it’s at least that, Badtux. The undocumented get counted on the “employed” side, but don’t get included in the “unemployed” numbers, so you know the number is worthless.
war is terrific, if you’re a robber baron. they’ve got their own economy
I really hated the crap they pawned off on the military at absurdly inflated prices. They really don’t care that people’s lives depend on what they sell to the government.
from what my ex-military acquaintances tell me, even the military doesn’t care all that much about it’s people’s lives.
The about-to-retire crowd in Washington enable the MIC to sell this crap to the government in hopes of landing a job after they get out. That needs to be stopped.