RECESSION

Hi Au... would you like a beer?

Sad! Inability to carry on a discussion!

Thanks but no thanks.

You are welcome.

ECONOMY
In Need Of A Jump-Start
Congress returns this week to focus on a plan to "jump-start the economy and try to shorten the slowdown that many economists say has already begun to take hold." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have openly expressed their desire to work with President Bush to pass an economic package aimed at buttressing consumer confidence and avoiding a recession. "We want to work with the president in a bipartisan way to develop a fiscal stimulus package" that is "timely, targeted, and temporary," Pelosi said in a statement yesterday after meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The Fed Chairman, who has signaled his plans to cut interest rates by a half percentage point at the end of the month, reportedly told Pelosi that some stimulus is needed, a shift from last week when he said his thoughts on a fiscal stimulus were "inchoate." Both the administration and Congress appear to agree on the need for immediate action. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said any stimulus package should be put into effect swiftly, and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) added that any stimulus package has to "get money into the economy quickly."

CURRENT STATE OF ECONOMY: With plummeting home sales, oil near $100 a barrel, and slowing employment, the current economic environment is perilous for a growing number of Americans. "We begin the new year with America's economy in the worst shape and the middle class at its most uncertain since the days immediately following 9/11," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). A Labor Department report last month showed the nation's unemployment rate jumped to five percent, a two-year high. "Sales at U.S. retailers stalled in December, capping the weakest holiday shopping season in five years." Additionally, economists at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley have said the United States is probably slipping into a recession. "With signs of economic stress abounding, Bush's approval for handling the economy was 33 percent," compared with 36 percent in November. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll reports that "concern about the economy has jumped to the front of voters' minds as optimism about the nation's direction has dipped to its lowest point in more than a decade."

STIMULUS PLANS: Congressional leaders are insisting that conservatives not inject their desire to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans "into negotiations of a short-term rescue package intended to dampen the impact of a recession." But some Republicans are insisting on keeping long-term tax cuts on the table. "t isn't too soon to talk about making permanent the Bush tax cuts. ... I think that has to be part of the discussion," said Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI). The President is reportedly "weighing a tax rebate targeted at low- and middle- income Americans, according to a government official. Bush probably will announce the plan in his Jan. 28 State of the Union speech. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in Congress are designing their own package, which may include public works spending, aid for the poor and a tax rebate." Leading Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have unveiled stimulus plans of their own. By contrast, Republican candidates Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani "are much more skeptical about short-term government rescues." The Center for American Progress has recommended that any stimulus plan adhere to four principles: 1) stem the decline of home values, 2) ensure the stimulus contains immediate impact, 3) target the benefit to those recipients most likely to spend it, and 4) strengthen the economy in short-term ways that inure to America's long-term economic benefit.

SPOTLIGHT ON MICHIGAN: Today, voters in Michigan head to the polls in the state's primary with economic concerns looming at the forefront of their minds. Michigan "has lost about 275,000 industrial jobs since 2000, and has the nation's highest unemployment rate, 7.4 percent." Detroit has been hit by "more foreclosure filings than any other city in the one hundred largest US metropolitan areas." The Big Three U.S. automakers have shed both white- and blue-collar jobs, and cutbacks from auto suppliers have spread through other sectors of the Michigan economy. But as they campaign in Michigan, most Republican candidates "are sticking to their existing proposals for lower taxes and less regulation," unwilling to propose a larger role for government intervention to help revive the sagging economy. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes that "recent statements by the candidates and their surrogates about the economy are quite revealing." For instance, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) acknowledges, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should."

-- AmericanProgressAction

Extending Bush's tax cuts?

Phuck that!

Cycloptichorn

I'm not sure yet.

but I do know that I will learn from those same sources that told me about global warming 15 years ago as opposed to the people that told me it was "whacko bull$hit". The same sources that told me they would find no WMD's in Iraq and that the War would be a costly disaster. The same people that told me NAFTA was bad for the country as opposed the the people that told me it would be a trade dream and bring prosperity to both countries.

How many of our audience were glued to the T.V. set when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addressed the U.N. Security Council with cartoons and threats of the boogie man with 8500 liters of anthrax, waiving a bottle of chalk. And now these people want to cheer their new agents of change?!?!?!

Ron Paul on recession (2min)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shLX-2ligGc

"The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers… The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the government's greatest creative opportunity…
By the adoption of these principles the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity."

-Abraham Lincoln

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered . . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson -- The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, (1809)

I dont accept that there will be or that there is currently a recession.

What I do think is that everyone saying that there is going to be a recession is whats going to cause one.

Its a self fulfilling prophecy.
Politicians say were are facing a recession, so people stop spending money, they stop buying any luxury items, they basically start to hoard what they have.
When that happens, we go into a recession and the so called "experts" can then say "see, we told you it was going to happen".
I dont accept that.

If there is a recession, I refuse to participate.
I will continue to spend money, I will continue to live my life the way I do now, and I will continue to buy the things I want to buy.

Sorry, but you won't have a choice. You can't 'opt out' of a recession.

If you continue to live your life in the same fashion, expect your savings to dwindle at a greatly increased rate then you had previously planned.

Cycloptichorn

IMO the stimullous needed that will be permanent and stop the bleeding is to stop pouring money down that sinkhole in Iraq. Find a way to bring back or replace the jobs lost thru globalization and reduce the the need for foreign oil.

That would help a lot. We are spending $20 B PER MONTH on the Iraqi war, which is big money. We could save a lot of oil by requiring new cars placed in service by, say, 2011, to be plug-ins. Toyota plans to market such a car in 2010.

How can you bring jobs back from globalization if you can't compete with them. you would have to lower the standard of living and work conditions to the level of that work/prodution force in other those countries (china/Mexico). You would have to treat your own people like they treat theirs.

You would have to create a two class system here to match theirs or raise their living/works standards to match ours.

Globalization isn't hard to understand it's just a matter of our own denial. We will be forced by globalization to become unamerican or you can say we will be forced to do to our workforce/people what we have done in other countries.

Unions, labour laws, work standards etc, etc, out the window.

Then the GNP will go up.

Amigo, as depressing as it is, I agree with you. The long-term prognosis is, in my view, very grim.

This tax rebate scheme Bush and others are proposing is amusing. It is supposed to encourage us to buy things so as to spur the economy. Thus, we will use the money to buy things from China, India, et al. So whose economies will we spur?

It is interesting that the Reps are promising big tax cuts, with Rudy saying that his will be the biggest in history. He commented last night that the end result will be more revenue for the government. I guess he hasn't examined the results of tax cuts by the last three Rep presidents. Does anyone really doubt that the national debt will soar that much more?

Snort!

I don't know. Do you have a pic?

It's a moral question. What do we do for money and What are we prepared to do to our own people? But we won't have to answer that. The people that answer that question are our own government. The problem is they are globalist before they are Americans. They have already decided what to do for money and what to do with America, they fund, borrow and sale to other countries.

Who bailed out city bank?

Where did cheney take Halliburton to avoid American law?

Who started the war? Wars are very profitable for America. Why are we in a reccesion? Because the money did not go back into the country or to the people that would spend it and that paid for the war with blood and money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBZne09Gf5A&feature=related

The next action coming out of the white house may be a commercial advertising America for sale "cheap" "

That was the plan, Globalization. An America owned by international bankers.

Next is a domestic policy made by international bankers and inforced by the our own goverment that answer to these bankers (and are invested in).

You can take the illegal war in Nicaragua in the 1980s as an example. That is the model for Iraq and every other case where we subvert democracy for money and power. Search John Negroponte Iraq and Nicaragua.

These policies are going global. Thats what globalization is. The reccesion here is in the course of events of globalization. When and if Americans choose to fight back Blackwater will be called in like they were called in to New orleans.

Here is where the training takes place to subvert democracy and prevent fair pay and standard of living. Then corporations can come in (outsource) a "cooperative" workforce. that is what we compete with. That is the reccesion. Yes? No?

http://www.soaw.org/type.php?type=8

What happened to our audience.

They can't handle the truth. So the truth will get worse and worse.

Whereas American news sources seem to focus on primaries and the holiday today, slightly panicky headlines seem to dominate elsewhere today...