“The USA is not only still around, but is doing just fine thank you.”

Obviously someone in the top 3 percent of income here….

“No such thing as permanent prosperity.” 

I don’t think anyone is expecting permanent prosperity except those who profit the most by it…sound familiar?

“...hopefully they’ll be smarter about it next time, just as business has to learn from its mistakes.”

Uh huh, just as those huge mega-corporations ‘learned’ from their mistakes. Also, maybe those people were just doing what the elite told them to.  Maybe they were fed lines of crap and misinformation by these same businesses so people would not stop buying.  Maybe they finally decided that the only way to save those HUGE incomes were to subvert the political process to their own ends.  Maybe the were very successful at it, because the people were too busy spying on each other and worrying about pedophiles and terrorists, and these same items were inflamed and exaggerated by the media at the behest of these same lobbyists who control them and their political puppets with the promise of power and money. Enron is just one example of that ‘learning’ you mention.  That hierarchy KNEW they were screwing their employees and investors….those same ‘people’ you mentioned before who should ‘learn’ from their mistakes.

So, I hope they do learn.  I hope they learn well.  I hope they learn to stop giving money to people that are little more than money-sucking pondscum.  I hope they stop allowing the military/industrial complex to run things.  I hope they learn that people are the best investment in a society, since those people create ‘society’.  I hope they learn to stop believing the sensationalist, hyped media that fuels their knee-jerk, emotionally charged reactions, reactions that were planned from the beginning to keep us at each others throats and not paying attention to the greedy, money loving scavengers that have been put on a pedestal as examples of how our country should operate as well as elected to our political processes, and are even now destroying our government and our country from the inside.  I hope they learn to listen to the rhetoric so they can see crap for what it is.  I hope they use their brains to evaluate the issues and come to a decision based on logic and facts, not emotions and bull hockey.  I hope they see that their efforts, which create the massive wealth they are not allowed to get any but the tiniest fraction of, are wasted since they will never get to a point where they can stop making someone else rich and start trying to create their own ‘place in the sun’  I hope they learn that ‘We The People’ means ‘all of us’, not just the few who have enough money to flaunt their lifestyles and their greed in the face of the people who created it for them.  (yes, FOR THEM..I have never met anyone who I would describe as wealthy who got to that point ENTIRELY by themselves.  Nor is there such a person.  Unless you created the building materials, cleared and prepped the land your business sits on, created the metals and the electronics you use in your vehicles, designed and built them….I can go on, but I hope you get the picture) 

I hope they do learn.  But I am not holding my breath, since your comments prove that there are still people out there who are falling hook, line, and sinker for the crap spewing out of our politicians throats…crap fed them by their masters who want you to sit there and feel superior while the nation we had is subverted by greed and pompous self-importance.

As all of the economic measuring and reporting entities are basically controlled by the political machinery, what incentive is there to report anything but good news.  After all, bad news does not get anyone (re)elected.  Much of the reporting in the MSM is just a re-hash of government generated happy news.
President Bush points to indicators that show how much better things are while Democratic Legislators point to how bad things are, but when the D’s are in power, they only report the good. 
There is a need for an independent body to report of real economic information. If we only design our measurments to tell us good news, (for example the unemployment rate does not include millions of people that have just given up the hope of getting a job) then we will never have an accurate measurment of the state of the economy.

Perhaps we “decide” to buy anything we need from foreign-owned companies.  Based on the “consumerism” economy of Americans, witholding revenues from American companies, might get them to realize that WE ARE the reason that they are where they are, economically speaking.  What the saying again?  He who giveth can also taketh away? (As an atheist, I inserted “he” for “God” call it poetic license).
They need to take notice and we, as Americans, need to make them do just thet.

Fabulous. thank you from the bottom of my heart. Bush

The people who have the power to change things, are the ones benefiting from the way things are going now. They want worker pay to be lower, so they themselves can have more.

In other circles, the token tax rebate would be called a bribe. The Republicans have given us war and made us poor. Gee, thanks a lot.