LAT: For Many, Economy's State Lies Between Partisan Views

[DeepModem Mom]

THE NATION
For Many, Economy's State Lies Between Partisan Views

By Don Lee, Times Staff Writer


President Bush has been saying that the U.S. economy has "turned the corner." Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry, in the wake of Friday's poor jobs report, quipped that it was more like a U-turn.

But around the country, the feeling seems to be that neither assessment is quite on the mark.

The nation's economy, by most indications, is continuing to expand at a respectable pace. Business investment remains solid. Factories are churning out goods. And homes are selling fairly briskly.

Yet for all that, the economy can't seem to get much real momentum going.

If anything, the events of recent months — soaring oil prices, continued unrest in Iraq and terrorist alerts — have made many employers and workers nervous, leading to slower consumer spending, shocks to the stock market and sagging job growth.

That picture was borne out in dozens of interviews over the last two days with employers and workers across the country.

Although hardly a scientific sample, these voices underscore what a welter of recent economic data also suggests: The U.S. economy seems to be moving along neither robustly (as Bush has hinted) nor terribly slowly (as Kerry suggested), but at a middling pace where most everybody is treading cautiously....


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cautious8aug08,1,2715805.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Skittles]

1. a "middling pace"?

sorry but that sucks and Kerry needs to drive home the point that things could be better and that he is the one to get the economy moving.

[teryang]

2. Chimp has the worst record since Hoover

When I drive to work I see an army of dispossessed, homeless and jobless Americans that is steadily increasing in size. It is a scene that could have been painted in the thirties. I'm over fifty and I've never seen anything like it.

As long as we're telling anecdotal stories about how "middling" things are.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Reading Brock's "Rep. Noise Machine" -- he says not since the year 1929...

have Republicans controlled WH, Senate and House. Get a clue, voters of America!

[sandnsea]

4. 75% employment, Happy Days!

I bet there was some fucktard writing about the "middling pace" during the Depression too. :eyes:

[wildeyed]

5. Bushco has been trying

to scare us, and it has been working. But it is also bad for the economy.

If anything, the events of recent months — soaring oil prices, continued unrest in Iraq and terrorist alerts — have made many employers and workers nervous, leading to slower consumer spending, shocks to the stock market and sagging job growth.

In addition, bushco has nothing else up their sleeves to improve the economy. The only thing they ever had was tax cuts and interest rate cuts. An we can't cut taxes anymore and we can't lower interest rates, so the only thing that is left is new ideas. An George 'stay-the-course' Bush doesn't do new ideas.

[whistle]

6. What is this guy talking about.....

...American factories are closing down by the hundreds and putting 1,000's of workers out on the streets. The parent companies of these manufacturing concerns are shipping those jobs over the boarder to Mexico where the wages are 1/10th of those here and benefits are nil. In addition 10,000's more service and production jobs that are allowing the anemic U.S. economy to continue are being sent overseas to China, Hong Kong, India and other low wage/no benefit labor markets, so goods can be shipped back to the Wal-Marts, Disney World's and numerous other retail chains around the country can sell cheaply made goods at tremendous mark-ups.

The jobs that America has managed to keep here have to do more with the management, marketing, distribution and accounting of these non-American made goods and services than with innovation and manufacturing. Half of the parts and materials that our big three automotive companies use in the assembly of cars on American assembly lines are imported. Where do the bulk of the electronic toys and giant flat screen HDTV's patents lie, not with American inventors or engineers, but with Japanese and South Korean corporations. We are doing what we can do best here in America, making, selling and distributing military weapons, death and destruction abroad and now here at now home through the constant reminders from Homeland Security. Our tremendous and rising trade deficits are reminders of that.

Trade deficits, federal, state and local budget deficits, American consumer debt, corporate debt, it adds up to over $33 trillion and is out of control. How much longer can we as a nation of debtors continue this pace before the whole house of financial paper caves in on us?