On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 16:36:24 -0800, "Jim E" <YD641387@SEA.net> wrote:

"Robert" <writer77@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:4v6dnem6yM8dY0LenZ2dnUVZ_s-dnZ2d@comcast.com...

"See It Now!" <ccc@atiheart.net> wrote in message
news:FQQDf.20465$Yu.8356@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...

Americans' personal savings rate dipped into negative territory in
2005,
something that hasn't happened since the Great Depression. Consumers
depleted their savings to finance the purchases of cars and other

big-ticket

items.

Why are you blaming Bush for stupid consumer behavior?

Because the batshit liberals will grasp any straw that they think they can
in their failing effort to smear the President.
The entire production is getting downright silly.

"is getting"? It was silly when they started blaming Bush back before
he even took office - or won the 2000 election, for that matter.

"See It Now!" <ccc@atiheart.net> wrote in message
news:khTDf.40664$dW3.38308@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...

"OhBee OneKunobee" <Ohbee@aol.com> wrote in message
news:vMOdnZG95dACe0LeRVn-oA@adelphia.com...

"See It Now!" <ccc@atiheart.net> wrote in message
news:FQQDf.20465$Yu.8356@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...

Americans' personal savings rate dipped into negative territory in
2005,
something that hasn't happened since the Great Depression. Consumers
depleted their savings to finance the purchases of cars and other

big-ticket

items.

===============================

You obviously dont know the definition of a depression or recession.

But

then agai you can't pok eholes in paper ballots properly, so i am not
really
surprised.

I don't live in poke-a-hole Floriduh.
=================

Dont tell me that have Computer voting in your Kentucky Holler??

It's not just "Bush's depression."

Part of this depression, if that's what it is, is driven by debt. And
Americans have been largely operating a debt-driven economy since the
1980s, if not since the 1940s. Huge government debts, large corporate
debts, very high levels of individual consumer debt. And recently, for
the past 10-15 years, very heavy consumer reliance on credit cards.

Part of this depression also is being driven by the loss of American
industrial jobs to China and other Third World countries, thanks to
global free trade. And global free trade has been the preferred policy
of the American political class, of both the Republican and Democratic
parties, since Ronald Reagan's administration in the 1980s - if not
before.

Under the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton in the 1990s, in
fact, there was bipartisan cooperation between the President and the
Republican Congress to push through the NAFTA treaty and the GATT
Treaty - two important free trade measures that Republicans began
pushing in the '80s during the Reagan/Bush era.

Global free trade, or at least the appearance of global free trade, is
also not just a politician's dream. It's what most of American
manufacturing industry and most of American agribusiness wants, or at
least pretends to want, because it's the most politically acceptable
excuse for aggressive American policies to capture foreign markets for
US products. Products that US farmers, corporations and small business
turn out in such massive amounts that we can't possibly consume all of
them at home.

So "depression," if that's what we've got right now, isn't just a
Republican problem, and it isn't just a Democratic problem. It's
rooted in patterns of economic activivity that both political parties
tend to favor, and it's rooted in a kind of economic rhetoric that
American business, American agribusiness and many American business
publications -- e.g. Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and Business Week
-- find to be Holy Gospel.

I really dislike the Bush administration, but let's recognize this
economic depression for what it is - which is a natural, inevitable
feature of American capitalism.

Economic depression in fact is a regular, recurring feature of
capitalism, and this nation has experienced depressions and recessions
at regular intervals since the Panic of 1837.

Now we're getting hit again. Except this time, the ordinary problem of
cyclical, recurring depression is mixed in with a more serious threat
-- the breakdown of Western domination over the Third World, and
especially of the imperialistic Western control that countries like
Britain, France, Germany and Russia - with some US participation --
once exercised over China.

And with foreign controls gone, China is developing its own form of
aggressive, export-oriented capitalism - an export-oriented capitalism
that puts traditional US markets at risk. A Chinese capitalism that
insists on dumping cheap manufactured products onto some of the same
markets that US corporations would like to dominate, and that in this
way puts American profits and American production at risk.

Another aggravating factor of the current US economic slump, obviously,
is the rise of "global outsourcing" within American capitalism, and the
ability of American-based corporations to ship many of their IT jobs
and their administrative jobs to low-wage Third World countries like
India, via the Internet. What "global outsourcing" means for the
American working person, of course, is that in the name of "free trade"
and "competitiveness" and a lot of other comfortable sounding hokum, we
now get to compete with the badly paid workers of Asia on the famous
level playing field. So that over time, the level of our wages and the
level of Asian wages ought to converge.

"Bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry --"

When you put it all together, American capitalism, and of course the
larger system of global capitalism in which it's embedded, is going to
kick our asses economically, until we're so sore we can never sit down
again.

In the name of "free trade" and "free markets" and "democracy" and
"economic progress," our standard of living is being equalized with the
standard of living of India and China, while enormously overpaid CEOs
of American corporations get huge rewards for organizing the levelling,
and while the richest 10 percent of the American population, the one
that owns the vast bulk of the stock, profits from our growing poverty.

And it ain't Bush alone that's doing this. Bush is a more extreme
cheerleader for the process than the Democrats are; Bush in fact is
terrible, and he has to go. But if you think that American capitalism
will be "kinder and gentler" to working people when the Democrats
inevitably regain the White House and the Congress, as they must -- if
you think that a Democratic win alone is going to reverse the basic
heartlessness of the unregulated "free market" -- well, guess again.

On Wed, 01 Feb 2006 04:51:17 GMT, "Goo Goo" <kshipira@unity.com>
wrote:

2005,

something that hasn't happened since the Great Depression. Consumers
depleted their savings to finance the purchases of cars and other

big-ticket

items.

Translation: People had money to spend and felt comfortable about
making big ticket purchases.

Translation: People were forced to find transportation for that suburban
Walmart nightshift job they got.

A job is something you get when your parents kick your lazy ***** out of
the house, what would you know about it?