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Slower growth across the US, where almost one in 10 are out of work, was expected by economists. But many expressed surprise at the extent of the slowdown and the continued anxiety among consumers. While business investment grew strongly, consumers sat on their hands. Spending on services was especially weak with figures showing a meagre 0.8% annual rise.
Originally posted by snowspirit
I was watching cnn this morning, it almost sounded like some were blaming the consumer for not spending their money. They actually called it hoarding their money. What money? There aren't enough jobs down there anymore. They need to be able to manufacture their own stuff, that has mostly been moved out of the country. Their retirement funds aren't even a sure thing, they need all their money just to live.
At least in Canada, they acknowledge that we don't have money, and they tell us to save, and pay down debt first if possible.
Down there they are being accused of hoarding money. By the media of course, making everything worse.
Originally posted by woodwardjnr
reply to post by ldyserenity
So what they are saying is
If you can't consume anymore, what good are you to the system? Even if you don't need something, consume it anyway. You are a consumer, your purpose, your reason to be, is to consume.
Originally posted by woodwardjnr
reply to post by ldyserenity
So what they are saying is
If you can't consume anymore, what good are you to the system? Even if you don't need something, consume it anyway. You are a consumer, your purpose, your reason to be, is to consume.
We also detailed the broader, accelerating macroeconomic sweep of cycles last summer in columns like "20 reasons new megabubble pops in 2011." We summarized a long list of major warnings from financial periodicals -- Forbes, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Economist -- and from the voices of Warren Buffett, Bill Gross, a sitting Fed governor and a former Commerce secretary. Multiple warnings "hiding in plain sight," beginning with a Fed governor warning Greenspan in 2000 about subprime risk.
But the big shocker came from the new Treasury secretary two years before the meltdown: Bloomberg News reports that shortly after leaving Wall Street as Goldman Sachs' CEO, Henry Paulson was at Camp David warning the president and his staff of "over-the-counter derivatives as an example of financial innovation that could, under certain circumstances, blow up in Wall Street's face and affect the whole economy."
Yes, they knew. And still both Paulson, a Wall Street insider, and Greenspan's successor, Ben Bernanke, a Princeton scholar of the Great Depression, stayed trapped in denial and kept happy-talking the public for months after the meltdown began in mid-2007. Get it? While they could have put the brakes on this meltdown years ago, our leaders were prisoners of their distorted, inflexible views of conservative Reaganomics ideology.
As a result, once again the "best and the brightest" failed America and now they and their buddies in Washington and Corporate America are setting up the Crash of 2011.
Now it's time for my 2008 update, a look into the future where things will get far worse during the next presidential term. And given human behavior, especially in the deep recesses of Wall Street's "greed is good" DNA, it seems inevitable that no matter how well-intentioned the new president may be Wall Street and Washington's 41,000 special-interest lobbyists will drive America into the Great Depression 2.