The DOW is dropping below where it was when the Bush presidency began eight years ago. Worse, we are in much worse shape than we were in 2001. The internet craze was about to burst, but bricks and mortar business were still pretty strong, and construction was about to take off. In other words, following the Clinton presidency, the fundamentals of the ecoomy WERE strong. However, that is not the case now. Things are pretty screwed up, as some of the stories below indicate. Yes, the bailout was passed by Congress, but it will still take at least 30 days before this massive 700 billion bailout can begin to be implemented. To the extent there is a delay, blame McCain and the Republicans for trying to pin this entire bailout on the Democrats, and politicize this process. Heck, they are doing it right now with ads attacking the bailout and taking credit for getting it past.
The fact of the matter is that McCain may try to restart the cultural wars, but he has to deal with the basic reality. Obama just needs to take each of McCain's negative ads, and shove it back down McCain's throat as being out of touch. McCain is losing sight of the big issues. Obama could say, "yes, we could spend millions on ads regarding McCain being a member of the Keating 5 and Rick Davis being on the dole from Fannie Mae, but instead we want to tell you in detail about what we are going to do for you." In other words, aggressively mock McCain for his efforts to distract voters from the fact that they are losing their homes and their jobs. When McCain touts cutting taxes for the rich, Obama just needs to ask how is that working right now, and isn't that George Bush's economic policy? How is that working? Indeed, Obama is doing that right now based on recent job's data. Yup, those Bush tax cuts are doing a world of good, aren't they?
I am sure McCain will get racist, anti-Catholic, anti-gay, you name it. However, as Democrats, we need to keep our eye on the ball. We are facing a situation where a mild recession is the upside, and a severe recession is the downside. It is scary the agreement among both Republican and Democrat leaning economists on the enormity of the crisis. I was watching Larry King, and Paul Krugman and Ben Stein in one show, and Ben Stein and Robert Reich in another, were all generally agreeing that we are in a bad situation. And it is not going to go away.
If John McCain's attacks have some traction, then the upside is that people are no longer so fearful that they can pay attention to irrelevant crap. However, as the dominoes begin to fall, people will pay attention to the economy, not whether Obama's former pastor or Palin's former pastor is worse. In other words, we no longer have the luxury of deciding an election on issues like flag burning and gay marriage. These may be important issues, but most folks aren't going to give a shit right now.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/162138/snip
Watching the slipping economy and Congress's epic debate over the Treasury's unprecedented $700 billion financial bailout, it is impossible not to wonder whether this is 1929 all over again. Even sophisticated observers invoke the comparison. Martin Wolf, the chief economic commentator for the Financial Times, began a recent column: "It is just over three score years and ten since
the Great Depression." What's frightening is not any one event but the prospect that things are slipping out of control. Panic—political as well as economic—is the enemy.
There are parallels between then and now, but there are also big differences. Now, as then, Americans borrowed heavily before the crisis—in the 1920s, for cars, radios and appliances; in the past decade, for homes or against inflated home values. Now, as then, the crisis caught people by surprise and is global in scope. But unlike then, the federal government is now a huge part of the economy (20 percent vs. 3 percent in 1929) and its spending—for Social Security, defense, roads—provides greater stabilization. Unlike then, government officials have moved quickly, if clumsily, to contain the crisis.
We need to remind ourselves that economic slumps—though wrenching and disillusioning for millions—rarely become national tragedies. Since the late 1940s, the United States has suffered 10 recessions. On average, they've lasted 10 months and involved peak monthly unemployment of 7.6 percent; the worst (those of 1973–75 and 1981–82) both lasted 16 months and had peak unemployment of 9.0 percent and 10.8 percent, respectively. We are almost certainly in a recession now, but joblessness, 6.1 percent in September, would have to rise spectacularly to match post-World War II highs.
/snip
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27011002/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27015257/
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