The Mayans were far less pessimistic about 2012 than the people who fill my inbox with prophecies of economic doom every day. Actually doom is too mild a word and so is apocalypse if one is trying to set a mood so terrifyingly descriptive of what is happening now and is about to happen, thanks to that Obama. Of course these people are selling investment strategies which I'm sure include buying things they're desperate to get rid of like the gold they bought at $1900 an ounce, but any way the market wind is blowing, they make money from the seminars and newsletters and from screaming like Chicken Little. There's a lot of money in the doom business.
Most of the people I talk to seem convinced that everything is getting worse and won't get better until we "get rid of" Obama in 2012; replacing him no doubt with someone who thinks managing a worldwide economy is an easy task for someone who once managed to save a pizza business by firing everyone, and yet has the nerve to talk about being able to "create jobs." Not to change the subject, but it's truly stunning to see the seamless segue from "government can't create jobs" to "elect me and I'll create jobs, jobs, jobs."
I guess it's no less stunning than Fox News' and John McCain's embarrassing assertions that the 2008 economy was "robust" as we all marched unwittingly off the cliff like a certain cartoon coyote -- and of course, that because "Liberals" were warning us about the inevitable collapse, they "hated America." Not like those forward thinking optimists that modern conservatives are.
We can expect, now that the next presidential election is a year away, that the howling and wailing and rending of garments will grow louder and angrier and numbers will appear proving that calamity awaits us all, no matter what actually happens. It's far too soon to be sure, but this chronic pessimist and a few others with more credible credentials are noticing that our Gross Domestic Product After adjusting for inflation, climbed to $13.35 trillion last quarter, topping the $13.33 trillion peak reached in the last three months of 2007.
I hate to make too much of it, particularly with the Filibustering Vandals doing everything they can to sabotage the economy until November 8th, 2012, but the reality is not quite what the pseudo-conservative chorus is chanting. At least for the moment, things are looking less down. Unemployment is still high, of course -- just a bit above Ronald Reagan levels and we can expect the screamers to keep screaming about that while refusing to do anything about it. We can expect Tea Pissers like Tom "Looney" Rooney (R-Florida) to keep meeting with "Job Creators" and telling us that business owners will hire more employees, irrespective of demand, if we cut their marginal rates even more -- and we can expect that if things do recover steadily and noticeably, he'll find a way to take credit for it because after all, they kept that O-BAH-ma from doing anything for four years while lambasting him for doing nothing. If there is anything these Doomsters are optimistic about it's that they'll always have someone to blame.
Captain,
ReplyDeleteAbout your Looney Rooney representative, I have one too: The Posey Imposter - infamous for sponsoring a birth certification bill in Congress last year, a man cut from the same cloth as Ritch Workman of 'dwarf bowling' infamy.
I started another blog recently, Dump Bill Posey, and I intend to use it prodigiously through November 2012. Anything to remove the Tea Orc scourge from our public life, I welcome any/all ideas.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the seldom spoken truth is that the contemporary Republican Party understands absolutely nothing about the economy. People accept their claims to omniscience in this regard for exactly the same reason they accepted Bush 41's claim to be "the education president": because he said so, nothing more.
They accept it so easily because, I think, anger addiction is taking over from tobacco addiction as our national disease. It's just fun to scream about the Democrats' "spending spree" and it's no fun at all to admit the economy of today is so interconnected, labyrinthine and hard to understand. Much better to rage than to admit you know nothing and are too damned dumb and lazy to learn anything.
ReplyDeleteAmericans couldn't smell a fallacy if it were wrapped in a dead fish and hidden under their couches. They are blind to the hidden arguments concealed in the prefabricated opinions they get from the media and I'm beginning to think that if our country gets what it deserves, those desserts will be the only kind of justice we ever see here.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteNo, they couldn't nose it out if it were there for a month and the maggots started crawling up their pants while they watched their favorite purveyors of conservi-blather.
Prefab -- yes, that touches on a key problem, the wholesale consumption of highly motivated ideological hackery and sham we get on weekend talk-shows. I stopped watching that stuff a good while back and feel five hundred pounds lighter for it. If certain people started doing their own thinking, it might just generate some healthy embarrassment and self-reflection. But of course they won't -- there are too many enticing, comforting distractions for that to happen.