Really Pissed Off!

Although I slept through Economics 101 when I was in college, you don’t need a degree in Economics to figure out that the only way to stop this economic landslide is to stop the loss of jobs and to create new jobs for a new “Economy!” The latest figure released for the month of November for the number of jobs lost was 533,000! now that the government has finally decided that we’re in a Recession, which began in December 2007,we’ve lost 1.9 million jobs and counting! What’s the outlook for 2009? That’s a question without an answer!

We’ve been told that the latest unemployment rate for November is 6.7% by the U.S. Government. The actual figure that we should be looking at is 12.2%, which takes in those marginally employed or no longer seeking or eligible for benefits. So far, we have done nothing to deal with the rapid rate of unemployment, except to release its statistics each month! The Bush Administration created TARP to bail out the banks and investment companies, just as Herbert Hoover created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1931 to do essentially the same thing. What this government has done is to repeat what the Hoover Administration and Congress did 77 years ago. It didn’t work in 1931 and it sure doesn’t look like it’s going to work now! We have thrown hundreds of billions of dollars at the financial industry and all they have done is to make a comfortable nest egg out of it. RPO has previously unloaded on TARP as a shot in the dark and a failure to deal with the real problem. That was over two months ago, and we’re over three hundred billion dollars poorer with more financial institutions still with their hands out for more. The “Trickle Down” effect went right into the coffers of the banks, lending institutions, buyouts or in some cases, shareholders’ pockets! At my age, the only “Trickle Down” effect is when I notice that my catheter fell out and my pants are wet! There is only one way to look at turning the Economy around and that is to look at it from an entirely different perspective. We may never see what we knew as “The Economy” until this recent, inevitable crash, as if it was a house of cards. “The New Economy” will be reconstructed by the creation and development of good jobs, and the retraining of the American worker.

We are at a defining time in History. The “Trickle Down” Economy of the 1980s and beyond has trickled right down the toilet. You can throw all the money in the world at it but it isn’t coming back. Time is running out if we want to free ourselves of fossil fuel, which as taken us to the brink with climate change and our future as a race in it. There appears to be no end in sight to turn around the unemployment rate, which will continue the economic spiral down into the abyss. On January 20th, President Elect Obama takes Office and has promised to return America to the people, not the privileged few. He and Congress have made a commitment for a Green Economy. We have an opportunity to return economic power back to America by investing in the untapped entrepreneurship of alternative energy. Although we’re loosing our edge in technology due to a failing education system and a lack of personal initiative, it’s not too late to recover our place in the World Economy. Given this opportunity, we have an opportunity for the development of millions of jobs, some already in existence and many others not even on the drawing board. This is one answer, not only to solve America’s unemployment, but to create a New Economy that will take all of use safely into the 21st.Century. The United Nations have initiated The Green Economy Initiative. We cannot rid ourselves of fossil fuels, but we can slowly replace them with a new technology. If we consider rebuilding America’s infrastructure by developing alternative energy wherever we can, we can create an Economy which will not only provide new jobs, but may well save the planet. Is this a pipe dream? Well, Darryl Zanuck said in 1946 that “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night!”

President Elect Obama on JOBS!