Economy Sinking Government Knows & Giving Bad Info

Wow so much love on this thread now it makes me blush All this aside we are in a recession some of the big brokerage firms are now finally admitting it Goldman Sachs, Meryl Lynch, & Lehman. I hope Bernanke and the government comes up with a plan soon because things will get worse before they get better. I still believe unemployment is at 10% and not at 5% and no I have no way to prove it so before anyone starts going nuts it is just a gut feel but over the past year my gut feelings just keep coming true hmmmm.

"When they tell you the sky is falling, they want to sell you something. When they tell you there's nothing to worry about, you know you're in trouble." Mrs. Clarendon, Storm of the Century

I think it has become clear that the economic woes we were talking about when this thread started, are very real indeed, and can no longer be hidden by those who have high interest in hiding this fact. I don't think that the truth can be hidden for so long without manipulating public perception through slanted figures and reports both from the public offices and the private sector. Now that "they" are admitting what we already knew, I wonder how bad it is really going to get. It's got to be bad alreasy for them to be admitting anything. I feel like our economic forecast is being brought to us by "Baghdad Bob" (Saddam's minister of information/propoganda during the invasion.)

"When they tell you the sky is falling, they want to sell you something. When they tell you there's nothing to worry about, you know you're in trouble." Mrs. Clarendon, Storm of the Century

I think it has become clear that the economic woes we were talking about when this thread started, are very real indeed, and can no longer be hidden by those who have high interest in hiding this fact. I don't think that the truth can be hidden for so long without manipulating public perception through slanted figures and reports both from the public offices and the private sector. Now that "they" are admitting what we already knew, I wonder how bad it is really going to get. It's got to be bad alreasy for them to be admitting anything. I feel like our economic forecast is being brought to us by "Baghdad Bob" (Saddam's minister of information/propoganda during the invasion.)

Originally posted by SEEWHATUDO
$1000 check is not going to do anything for our economy, it will be nice to have but people are hurting right now they will use that money to play catch up or hoard it in case the sky falls.

How wrong you all are. The $500 Bush gave everyone jump started the economy from near dead and led to unprecedented sustained growth in the economy. Doom and gloomers always end up taking it up the chute and this time will be no different. Optimisn is the only true reality.

I have never seen the government do anything but say "yep...normal recession probably coming, right on time." The data all pointed toward it for years, and we are long overdue for one. The emphasis was on "probably" because they never want to feed media hype. Whatever happens, the media will _always_ make it appear worse than it really is. This is because the media feeds off hype and emotion, and everyone will watch when you proclaim "OMG THE SKY IS FALLING" instead of "predicted recession on the way."

I have no reason to think unemployment is 10%, and if it was you'd know it by seeing riots on TV. I also have no reason to want the government to interfere - let the economy do its own thing. It'll go down and go back up, as always. Trying to "fix" it will only result in further problems, as the government is never successful fixing things - especially things that are unavoidable.

Originally posted by LightinDarkness
Trying to "fix" it will only result in further problems, as the government is never successful fixing things - especially things that are unavoidable.

Yeah thats a good point they do have a tendancy to screw things up but since it was their policies that brought us here I figured mabey they could do something to get us out.

reply to post by mybigunit


To me anything they do to "get us out" will only cause problems in the long run. But I also do not believe they "got us here" - all the data I've seen shows the is an expected and predicted economic recession that must happen in a capitalist economy. We can't always have good times.

reply to post by LightinDarkness

...and if it was you'd know it by seeing riots on TV.

Actually, we have been seeing riots on T.V. for a long time, the one man at a time kind.

Unemployment might very well be at ten percent, but if it didn't happen suddenly in a matter of days or weeks the impetus is lacking for rioting en masse.

For example, the poor realtionship between minority communities and the LAPD was increasing. The result was fewer examples of cooperation with police creating an impediment to their investigations, and a breakdown of the moral barriers which often prevent crime. When Rodney King was beaten, the impetus was established for the community to come together at one time in revolt of a long-standing condition.

If you can evenly distribute unemployment across the country, not let it concentrate in any one city more than another, and fail to report any sudden surges or the symptoms of said surges, you will have sucessfully removed the impetus for unemployment riots. Instead, the people who are fed up with the system will fend for themselves on an individual basis, and then be sent off to prison where they will no longer be counted as unemployed.

It's the old "frog on the stove" thing all over again.



[edit on 1/11/0808 by jackinthebox]

reply to post by jackinthebox


The people in the US are used to some of the highest standards of living in the world. Any actual deviation from that standard has historically lead to obvious signs like riots. I see no evidence that unemployment is 10%, nor are we headed toward 10% for a long - long - time. Seven to eight percent is reasonable in a recession, maybe 8.5%.

Different communities always have a "rough relationship" with the police as we try to remove the last vestiges of racism from society. I am unsure of what these relationships - which as far as I am aware have been around since the civil rights movement - says about economics since they have always been there, through the good times and bad.

Riots have been around since the US started, but the kinds related to economics happen with or without the government saying "yeah, unemployment is high." There were no such numbers during the great depression, but it happened anyways. Of course, I have seen no economist think we are even close to a depression, but in any case if we were the historical response occurs way before the government releases official numbers.

reply to post by LightinDarkness

Different communities always have a "rough relationship" with the police as we try to remove the last vestiges of racism from society. I am unsure of what these relationships - which as far as I am aware have been around since the civil rights movement - says about economics since they have always been there, through the good times and bad.

The cycle of racism that remains prevelant in society today is the direct result of Union policy during the civil war. The Union freed the slaves, but to this day has not sucessfully assimilated their descendants into the national economy. The freeing of the slaves was economic warfare against the south and had nothing to do with morality. That is why the Civil Rights Movement didn't happen until a century after the Civil War.

I wrote in more deatil on this at A Bigger Picture (Rise of the NWO)

reply to post by mybigunit



the ongoing false CPI, inflation, and COLAs with all that figgitting
with 'base' ammounts and 'core' ammounts is just so much accounting tickery...


but you just wait for the January 2008 "State of the Union" address
when GWBush presents us with the economic stimulus packages
to get the consumers back to consuming and getting credit...

rumor is that some form or rebate checks for all the (used-to-be)
'middle class' will be forthcoming...as the upperscale earners are
already benefiting from their ongoing tax breaks already.

i sure wish those DAVs would get a surprise check in the mail,
there's gotta be millions of vets out there & a $1K check to them wqould sure help turn the credit/bank implosion around !

reply to post by jackinthebox


I would agree that freeing the slaves was not for any higher reason of justice or morality, it was a calculated political and economic move. As you know, the civil war was not even fought about slavery.

However, I do not think that there was a "failure" on anyone's part, integration is a ongoing process that will take a long time. I think we have been by and large very successful, but there are still a few things that need changing.

reply to post by LightinDarkness


I believe that the failure of the United States government after the Civil War is clear. It was the Union policy that put the slaves out of work, without any method of assimilating them as productive citizens. Furthermore, the former slaves were stripped of the most meager living conditions once provided by the slave owners, as a matter of obligatory responsibility. This wrong has never been corrected.

What the Union policy did, was equivelant to putting orphans loose on the streets of a big city. Can the orphans survive? Probably. But at what cost?

reply to post by jackinthebox


Oh, I'm all for correcting wrongs. If you can find one single ex-slave alive today and one single union official, give the ex-slave millions and throw the union official in jail.

reply to post by LightinDarkness


So you agree then that the "union official" Abraham Lincoln actually did a disservice to blacks in America with the Emanciapation Proclomation?

reply to post by jackinthebox


Uhh no, and I sincerely hope you don't either. People have a right to be free, and no individual should be enslaved without their explicit consent (indentured servant is OK, slavery is NOT). The union should have done _something_ to retrain ex-slaves, although I do recognize that there were no "social programs" at that time, so this would have been extremely unusual. However, given the uniqueness of the event, they should have done something.

But everyone from that time period is now dead. You can't pay dead people or throw dead people in jail.

reply to post by LightinDarkness


Okay, so the United States should have found a way for the former slave to subsist and be assimilated into the economy, but did not. Was it then the responsibility of his/her children to find a job where the former slave could not?

reply to post by jackinthebox


Yes it was. The problem with reparations to people who were not slaves is obvious: my heritage is irish, and my ancestors came to America without any marketable skills. They came over to escape a famine. They had nothing. Their children had nothing. They worked and trained themselves to gain what little they had. Everyone has to, except the special few who are born to privilege. African Americans are no different.

Not to mention the very obvious problem that my tax money would be used to pay someone for wrongs they did not experience and for wrongs I (and my ancestors) did not do.

But this is far off topic...lets get back on topic please.

reply to post by LightinDarkness


I am not talking about reparations, I am talking about economic assimilation. Then or now, everyone needs to be provided the means to subsist. If there are no jobs, you can't work, plain and simple. If you have no land, you can not subsist on Earth's bounty. You cannot build anything without the tools and the materials. The overlords of our economic system try to dazzle us with skewed numbers to hide the fact that people in America today, of many colors, are no better off than the freed homeless and unemployed former slaves after the Civil War.

It is inexcuseable that in the richest country in the world, there should be one single homeless person. That is the only number that would really count for anything. Zero. Zero homeless people, zero people suffering from malnutrition, zero veterans denied treatment and swindled out of their money for getting shot, zero divorces from fighting over bills that cannot be payed, zero children growing up in poverty, etc, etc.

reply to post by LightinDarkness


Right on brother right on my family came over from Germany in the late 1800s after the war why should I have to pay reperations for something my family had nothing to do with. Frankly even if we did pay them it wouldnt be spent right anyways. Look what happen when we gave them the credit cards after Katrina..instead of buying food and supplies they bought strippers, guns, and drugs.