Bush's pending economic meltdown.

[cyclezealot]

Below is a article from Z Magazine...Those majority idiots from the red areas,who bought into bush's snake oil will bring us all down...A scarry article that makes sense to me...Why can not just the 'reds' face their economic come uppance and we assume their assets , when we tell them 'we told you so..'
Initial paragraph and a link...Read consider how the Oakies from the 1930's coped with adversity.......those that don't learn from their history are bound to repeat it...One scarry aspect..Economic adversity and Bush's security apparatus..


Don’t look now, but Bush’s house-of-cards economy is about to come crashing to earth. Just yesterday the Commerce Dept announced that the trade deficit soared to an all time high of $665 billion in 2004; a whopping 25% increase from the previous year. America’s gluttonous appetite for cheap foreign goods and its inability to produce more of what it consumes is quickening the country’s inevitable day of reckoning. Despite the rosy projections from the Bush clan and their friends in the media, the probability of an economic meltdown becomes more likely every day. Does the average American have any idea of the catastrophe that’s facing us?

Apparently, not. As the AP’s Martin Crutsinger says, “The deficit for 2004 was not only a record in dollar terms but also as a percentage of the total U.S. economy, climbing to 5.7 percent of the gross domestic product, up from 4.8 percent of GDP (news - web sites) in 2003. (By way of comparison; Argentina collapsed when its trade deficit hit 4% of GDP)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=7461

[whistle]

1. Will the crash happen on Monday or on the Thursday of next...

...week? Why are we be given 2004 numbers when we are in the final quarter of FY2005? The FY2006 budget begin in July and it is far worse then the current period we are in. I think Greenspan will announce his resignation next Tuesday, just a hunch:popcorn:

[cyclezealot]

3. anyone wonder how Bush will handle the crash.

I think he is nut job and will come unglued when solutions are hard to find...When the Iraq war started to unwind in summer of 04, they said he was taking mood elevators..
Think the fundies are so caught up in things like Schiavo, they will not mind losing their forutnes...and homes...OH well. they can hold their prayer sessions in tents..it is not going to be a pretty picture..
The captain of the Titanic at the helm and his polls are already in the 40's...

[MissWaverly]

4. I see him moving the White House to Crawford

He have his ranch cordoned off so no one will come near.

[cyclezealot]

5. think he will be as uninvolved as Hoover.

when he has no kooky ideas to offer.

[MissWaverly]

6. I think that Bush will be a man w/o a country

Once he no longer has power and becomes a lame duck no one is going to want to associate with him. They said at the Pope's funeral as soon as his image appeared to the crowd, they started to boo! Meanwhile, people were coming up to Clinton to greet him when he was shopping.

[amber dog democrat]

7. And still I am astonished he remains popular as he is.

It has me thinking his followers are dumber than he is.
Right now, I 'd say he is already without a country. What he has are dogmatized idiots and corporations to support him.

[MissWaverly]

11. People have always empathized with him

They see a fearless leader, someone who they see as a real cowboy, I think that reality is starting to set in, also the media has totally spun everything into a rosy glow. The problem is that we're broke, there's nothing more to party on, the middle class and the poor have felt this for some time, but it's going to come as a shock to many.

[CatholicEdHead]

2. I still have a copy of "Bankruptsy 1995"

and all we have done is delay what the book talks about. I of course found it on the clearance rack in 1996 for $1.

[Tux]

8. Another depression

It happens with free trade. Maybe next time we can go with fair trade and rebuild our alliances as we rebuild our nation. All over some book and a chimp.

[Deja Q]

10. With * at the helm, I think we won't rebuild anything but use our nukes.

Eventually. Some way, some how he'll find a way.

[indepat]

9. But, but, but isn't everything coming up roses for you and for me?

[whistle]

12. A short refresher on what has happened in U.S. so far...

..which brought George Bush into power:

<snip>

Recession/Depression on the Horizon
By Tony Wilsdon
Justice, April/May 2001

After the longest period of economic upturn in US history, the US economy is now in a serious downturn. "Here comes the slump," shouted the cover of Time magazine on January 8th. Evidence is growing that this will not be just a small, shallow dip, but that a major world economic recession will envelop the US and other countries in the coming period.


The US: What Kind of Recession
The most spectacular expression of this downturn has been the collapse of the high-tech industry and the bursting of the dotcom bubble. The manufacturing sector has been in recession since last summer, and layoffs are spreading in the industrial heartlands of the US, particularly in the midwest.

Industrial output fell 0.6% in January and February, the biggest back-to-back declines since the 1990-91 recession. Gross National Product, the most important statistic of economic growth, fell from 5% early in 2000 to 2.2% in the 3rd quarter and to only 1% in the 4th quarter. Orders for capital goods, a key indicator of the health of business, have declined over the last four months at an annual rate of 14.7%, similar to the recession experience of 1990-91. At the same time, banks are continuing to tighten credit. Many analysts now expect negative growth in the present quarter. Only the housing industry has not yet been affected by the developing recession, but this will not continue for long.

An important factor in this is the so-called 'wealth effect' from the dramatic rise of the stock market. This is the process where, because the stock market was growing during the late 1990s, consumers spent more based on stock options, etc. Now with the sharp decline in the stock market, this process has gone into reverse.

The destruction of wealth since the stock market's peak a year ago has reached a stunning $5.2 trillion. This represents almost half of the gross domestic product and over four times the amount of wealth wiped out in the 1987 stock market crash. For the first time since record-keeping began, household net worth declined last year. This has started to affect consumers, who are reducing spending. Retail spending fell 0.2% in February after rising 1.3% in January. The number of borrowers behind on mortgage payments jumped in the fourth quarter of 2000. Bankruptcies are at record levels.

<more>
<link> http://www.socialistalternative.org/justice24/0.html