re: Big B, December 6 at 2:40 pm:

Like most of us, I knew about the phony inflation numbers (how in blazes can you pretend to represent the cost of living while omitting food, energy, and housing?)  and unemployment numbers (that’s a big lie that has become as familiar to Americans as our flag - we shrug it off, just like Soviet citizens used to shrug off the latest “news” from Pravda).

But I didn’t really know how phony and massaged and rigged even the GDP number was. God, what a ridiculous shell game this “economy” is.

Yesterday, Jubak’s journal ran a story about how hiding the “real” inflation rate helped bring on this recession, and may just add to it’s severity. This fact, coupled with the fact that the real unemployment rate has been hidden as well for almost 30 years(and the phoney GDP numbers) are leaving americans asking themselves, just how bad are things out there? And how bad are they going to be?

During Reagans first term there was a recession. The powers that be at that time decided that the american people should not see the real stats surrounding the economy because they were depressing. So, Presto! Inflation stats no longer include the price of food, energy, or housing. GDP calculations were reconfigured to count productivity in the service sector with as much weight as a higher paying industrial job. Unemployment stats were now to include only those recieving state unemployment compensation. If you were one of the unfortunates whose benefits had run out, or if you never qualified in the first place, you were not counted among the jobless. If you are on welfare, or disability, you do not count. There are many publications and many economists out there who will tell you that the real unemployment rate is closer to 12%, as the real inflation rate is closer to 15%, and the real GDP numbers, that would show an economy that has been in recession since at least 2006.

These institutional lies, coupled with the gross profiteering of the oil industy in the last 2 years, now have the nation reeling. The US financial industry, now our largest, needed only 7 to 8 years since the repeal of Glass-Steagle to run the Behemoth US economy into the ground. We are now facing the perfect shit storm, and because big business has spent the last 30 unregulated years depressing salaries and benefits, and moving entire industries to third world nations, we no longer posess the financial wherewithal to heal our nation.

Our big businesses have thus far put forth no plans to reverse this economic crisis. Their only solution is to crawl to DC and beg for handouts from the cracked windows of their limos. Our government’s only solution has been to print more money and stuff it into the pockets of any passing aristocrate, asking him to pass some down to the rif-raf if they don’t mind.

America has lived a lie for over 60 years now. We thought that there was no stopping us from transferring our success in WWII into a century or more of US empire. But that old bugaboo of democracy has reared it’s ugly head, when people are free to do as they please, corruption rules the day. This generation of americans may ultimatly prove Kruschev correct, we may indeed rot from within.

Notice the stock market ROSE by over 3 percent on this news: “Yippee! High unemployment! Workers will accept any shitty pay they can get! Their suffering sweetens our empty existence! “

The social contract in America used to be, “Hey, this is a wealthy, creative country where people pursue lots of different dreams. Those primarily interested in accumulating wealth well do better at that than the rest, and that’s only natural, since that’s their ‘thing’. But most people can still do all right materially, while pursuing their various interests, without making money as the primary goal.”

But the elite capitalists can’t stand this. They can’t really be happy unless everyone else is perforce playing the same game, and losing miserably at it.

These greedy thugs never stop to wonder who is going to buy their stuff, when everybody’s either unemployed or making subsistence wages.

Capitalists think about nothing but money day in and day out, and it just kills them that anyone else might be able to have an OK life - not a lavish existence, but just getting along tolerably well - without obsessing constantly about money. How can you feel like a winner unless everyone else is playing the same game and envies you bitterly?

Mass poverty makes the traders happy, because it forces everyone else to think about money every single second of the day, just like them. They want their game to be the only game in town, so that they can feel like winners all the time - instead of specialists in something that other people find dismally boring and not particularly relevant to their own lives.

The financial “bailout” and the stock market “crash” happened exactly when It was obvious that McCain couldn’t win. The rich went to far on this one. It’s going to bite them in the ass

Article quote: “Speaking at the White House, Mr Bush said: “Our economy is in a recession. This is in large part because of severe problems in our housing, credit and financial markets.”

Reacting to the unemployment data, US President-elect Barack Obama said: “There are no quick or easy fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making, and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.”

Contrast these comments with this, from Sherwood Ross @ the Smirking Chimp:

“Indeed, if enough workers were getting paid a living wage Wall Street and Detroit would not find themselves begging Washington for billions. Homeowners would have enough money to pay their mortgages and buy new cars. Today’s crisis is the bitter payback for decades of corporate greed. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has written, “Most of what’s been earned in America” in the past 35 years “has gone to the richest 5 percent.” Result: 37 million Americans are said officially to live in poverty but Catholic Charities of Saint Paul-Minneapolis notes a more realistic accounting puts the poor at 50 million…..”

“....Far from evincing a drop of “compassion,” the AFL-CIO said the Bush 2008 fiscal budget “cuts more than one billion ($)in job training and employment programs,” this “just a week after he (Bush) talked about the need for better training and assistance to help America’s workers compete in a global economy.” It noted, too, the Bush budget “eliminates current job training for unemployed adults and at-risk youths.”

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19040

There are days when it is brazenly clear that Wall Street exhibits the same sleazy street thug mentality of the jerk who beats on the elderly or disabled and runs off with their (for all practical purposes) “useless” Social Security check.

Oh… and that green stuff, don’t worry about it…that’s just the BILE your body is rejecting along with the meat and potatoes of this particular class of traitors.

Every freelancer I know is out of work. Every single one, on both coasts. These workers are often not included in the data-gathering for unemployment statistics.

This crises is huge!

Boy, You gotta hand it to Ham-Archy and the slogan patrol for solving all America’s problems with a three word phrase.

Now the dittoheads are being told these layoffs are the first casualties of Obama’s presidency. The neoconservative fascists are rushing to blame Obama for all our problems. This is how they ruined Clinton, and they will push Obama even harder. Progressives must remain involved and show resolve.

The alternative is an Obama administration only being able to hear the loud shouts of angry brown shirts who seek to undermine the working class.

Pork is not good for your health. CUT THE PORK, keep the vegetables. The pigs after all can eat trash, while the poor vegetables are planted in debt.