I don’t presume to add anything to Lafayette’s eloquently brilliant analysis.

Howard Zinn once observed that we have traded our citizenship away to become full time “consumers”. If there are more of “us” than “Them” and they win most of the time, the problem must be us.

Wages have remained flat for 30 years and our manufacturing base has been exported. Question; how does one kick start a dieing economy without raising wages or bring back exported jobs? Getting out of or renegotiating NAFTA and the WTO is off the table! Tariffs are out of the questions! Greenspan devised a scam to turn our homes into ATM machines; allowing underpaid workers to still “consume” corporate goods and services while going ever so deep into debt. Nice exercise in “smoke and mirrors while it lasted; but alas all bad things reveal themselves in the end.

Today, Obama offers us a new short term “trick” to kick start the economy again without raising wages (flat for 30 years) or re-importing manufacturing jobs. Just as Greenspan turned our homes into ATMs, Obama has cashed in our retirement (new, new deal) by dusting off and repackaging an old Heritage Foundation idea(to defund Social Security)of a Pay Roll Tax Holiday! Originally, the Heritage Foundation dreamed up this scheme as a “back door” method of cutting the funds to Social Security, Turing it into an entitlement which would allow them to kill it more easily or pimp it on Wall Street!

Obama has managed with cover from the corporate media (MSNBC, CNN, Current TV and 85% of the co-called lefty blogs)to pull this off and odds are he will get an extension. It is almost comical how the Republicans pretend to resist cutting funds to Social Security. So, go ahead; spend your retirement just as we “ate” the Equity in our homes to “go shopping!” I agree with Lafayette, to find our oppressors, we need a mirror.

GETTING BACK TO NORMALITY

What is growth? How do we get growth? How do we enter into a period of no-growth.

There’s no mystery involved. But behind that change of GDP from quarter to quarter is an immense complexity - which escapes national economic policy making.

For sure, what the country needs is Stimulus Spending. For sure, austerity in the US and Europe is exactly NOT THE WAY out of the present Deep Doodoo Economy both must endure.

But beyond that bare simplicity lies a factor that is entire psychological. I call it the Feel Good Factor – you might want to call it something else. It is, quite simply, the willingness of consumers in the aggregate to spend. To consume products/services in such a manner that either
•  Hard-good inventories are diminished (which excites increased production) or
•  Services require more on-board hands to fulfill.

When does that happen? Unfortunately, there’s not an economist on earth who can tell us with any exactitude. They are all looking at the Leading Indicators. That is, those indexes that rise before growth is realized in significant numbers for a sufficiently long period of time.  For those interested in Leading Indicators, I will spare you the lesson – just go here.

The one Leading Indicator that we are all familiar with in that list linked is the S&P 500 because it is so broad-based and is balanced between both Manufacturing and Services. Remember, we are a Services economy for about 70% of our GDP. And, on that measure, things are moving forward in a reasonably good fashion. But the performance of one indicator alone does not make for a trend.

The S&P 500 is supposedly a Leading Indicator because the stock market seems to know, historically, when an inflexion upwards/downwards in an economy is about to happen. So, as the theory goes, stock investors buy or sell on these signals. But, how do they know?

Because they are looking at detailed retail/wholesale data on a weekly basis. In fact, Greenspan had a preference for rail-transport statistics. It is true, that as Demand begins to increase or slowdown, the transport of merchandise from the manufacturer to the wholesaler/retailer would show those changes.

MY POINT?

What the statistical analyses are waiting for is Jack ‘n Jill America to get back into purchasing mode after three years of paying down credit-debt from their previous binging on cheap-credit.

So, getting out of the Deep Economic Doodoo depends upon us – We, the Sheeple; we, the consumers. As I never tire of saying whilst others are pointing the finger all over the place looking for the culprit.

Just look in the mirror to find the culprit … now aggregate that figure in the mirror into America’s 110 million households that constitute the base of our National Propensity to Spend (on goods/services).

Cuz Jack ‘n Jill America wont be getting into the swing of Consumer Demand for as long as their Feel Good Factor does not allow it. Given the Daily News on the BoobTube that keeps yapping about this or that crisis, it’s going to take a while yet.

And especially in an election year, do not expect any great uplifting of Demand - just a slow crawl out of the hole. Meaning it would be far, far better for unemployment statistics were the November elections in March—and we could all get back to normality. Growth will then happen easily.

Tom Hartmann gave a nice summery of Jude Wanniski’s “Shoot Santa Claus” theory:

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2011/11/transcript-thom-hartmann-big-picture-has-ows-blown-republican-santa-claus-theory-20-oct

As I listen to Obama I am starting to truly believe is a “Trojan Horse”.

The man (Obama) came out and admitted that Ronald Wilson Reagan was one of his heroes!

More than once Obama has also proclaimed that “most” of his ideas are (off the shelf) old Republican ideas:

Cap and Trade

ObamaCare = RomneyCare + the GOP Indivisual Mandate.

Pay Roll Tax Holiday: Dreamed up awhile back by the Heritage Foundation as a “back door method of defunding Social Security.

Now Obama wants to cut 4 Trillion in 10 years; “shooting Santa Claus.”

Naomi Klein in her book “The Shock Doctrine” warn us of “Chicago Boys” using old (Friedman) “off the shelf” ideas during times of crisis.

More empty campaign speeches while refusing to address the problems, refusing to prosecute, refusing to enforce the law.  Talk about freedom and democracy after signing the NDAA, and pushing through immunity from prosecution for the very criminals who caused the economic catastrophe.  This man is more dangerous to our civil liberties than even the fascist Bush regime, expanding and codifying the very lawlessness and illegal practices that that criminal regime was so widely despised for.  Maybe if he spoke German and wore a swastika we would know him for what he is, but Americans have always been terribly naive, easily stampeded, and so ready to believe even the most outrageous lies, no matter how many times they have been lied to before.