How worried are you about the economy ??

Oil futures still over $100 a barrel. Dollar is still generally going down. It is the deficit. This economy is an economy running high on debt with little manufacturing (sustainable revenues), job growth is the slowest in six months....etc. It's a very messy recession/depression 'recovery'. So how pessimistic are you that as a country we are either stagnating, going backwards, or that what we are experiencing now is really a depression just well managed by Govt/Federal Reserve financial trickery ?

And then I was listening to Peter Yastrow, market strategist for Yastrow Origer, on CNBC today predict the US economy is on the verge of a "great, great recession." He talked in terms of an “almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible for money” over the direction of the market and the economy at large. For sure the "atypical" nature of the American economic situation from a long-term historical perspective makes a recovery particularly tenuous. I count myself VERY fortunate to still be gainfully employed (in a library no less ! ) with a stable personal financial outlook but the duration of mass unemployment is especially scary. And no one seems to be in control.

http://www.wtae.com/money/28092147/d...#ixzz1O2MRb8rJ
http://www.cnbc.com/id/43236764

I totally agree. Americans have been brainwashed for a decade or more to believe that manufacturing and producing things is ‘blue collar,’ ‘old fashioned’ smokestack legacy industries that were in inevitable decline. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. It is not the “past” of our economy. It is actually the basis of everything an advanced economy needs to thrive. Losing our manufacturing means losing all the top skill level positions that co-locate with a plant : a lot of our future opportunities to innovate, management jobs, skills needed for design, training, maintenance of the product, other ancillary service industries, etc.

It isn't that I have taken such a hit being on the civil service scale, besides not getting pay raises this year and a possible salary cut. I do live in a city with an official unemployment rate of 15 percent, highest in the state, and it is scarcely mentioned now even in local media. Going from 18 to around 15 a year ago was such a huge psychological relief - slow but steady progress at a time when other areas still saw increases - the feeling of crisis completely dissipated (along with most food barrels, etc). But downplaying only makes the working poor more invisible. Being out of work is so common that it is widely seen as a long-term fact of life. What should be unacceptable has gained acceptance.

My only hope I guess is that changing financial conditions in the US and developing countries will offset some of the cost benefit associated with off-shoring. Corporations with a sophisticated knowledge of wage rates, business climates and labor supply can surely find a productive location in a smaller market within this country.

I only mentioned the deficit because governments are now saving by spending less and they lose as a weaker economy depresses tax receipts. Without the barrier of fiscal austerity there would be leeway to stimulate demand to encourage economic growth.

But there is also the more intractable "problem" of technological advances that enables us to produce more stuff with fewer and fewer people. And technology is getting better all the time. The result is that even without offshoring, the US can probably produce enough to survive without everyone taking part in the workforce. Corporate profits boom for the investor /speculator/big-business elites, but who is going to give everyone else money to buy the things being produced ? You end up with a very highly educated people who can’t find the work they feel qualified for (entitled to). That is a recipe for trouble and revolution like we're seeing in Greece and the Middle East.

Neither party and most politicians don't pay much attention to the issue of private sector American jobs because they rarely associate with people who are affected by it. In fact they are getting donations from people who benefit from the trend.

The American standard of living is in the process of racing down to the level of that of developing nations, and the American economy is taking on the profile of a third world commodity supplier. Instead of shipping manufactured goods to the rest of the world as we did in the past, our main exports are now raw materials.

What is Ron Paul's solution ? To let the market sort it out ? Who are his contributors ?

This statement is alarming in that we are having a freaking economic nightmare in the nation and this administration doesn't appear to be even attempting to grasp the impact.

NO MORE DAILY ECONOMIC BRIEFINGS: The White House admitted yesterday that the president no longer holds daily economic briefings. The meetings, which were announced with fanfare at the first press briefing of the Obama administration, have disappeared from his schedule altogether, according to The Hill. The sessions just “petered out,†the White House told the paper.


I'm still amazed by how many people appear shocked by the pickle we're now in and seem more interested in jokes about Paul Revere than holding the president to the fire.