An Apt Commentary for the Times

As I noted in "Amen, Brother Charles," my intelligence-gathering radar includes a great many websites, which run the gamut from mainsteam media sites, news portals, and aggregators, to blogs, alternative news, online community, and subversive sites that strive to ensure important information does not remain hidden from view (for long) in an era of cover-ups and censorship.

During today's journey into the far reaches of the World Wide Web, I stumbled across an excellent commentary by Michael Snyder at BlackListed News, "25 Questions To Ask Anyone Who Is Delusional Enough To Believe That This Economic Recovery Is Real," that aptly sums up the kinds of questions those rose-colored glasses-wearing idiots in Washington and on Wall Street should be asking themselves before they open their mouths and start spouting nonsense about an economic recovery:

#1) In what universe is an economy with 39.68 million Americans on food stamps considered to be a healthy, recovering economy? In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011. Is a rapidly increasing number of Americans on food stamps a good sign or a bad sign for the economy?

#2) According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March. This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005. So can you please explain again how the U.S. real estate market is getting better?

#3) The Mortgage Bankers Association just announced that more than 10 percent of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment in the January-March period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago. Do you think that is an indication that the U.S. housing market is recovering?

#4) How can the U.S. real estate market be considered healthy when, for the first time in modern history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together?

#5) With the U.S. Congress planning to quadruple oil taxes, what do you think that is going to do to the price of gasoline in the United States and how do you think that will affect the U.S. economy?

#6) Do you think that it is a good sign that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of the state of California, says that “terrible cuts” are urgently needed in order to avoid a complete financial disaster in his state?

#7) But it just isn’t California that is in trouble. Dozens of U.S. states are in such bad financial shape that they are getting ready for their biggest budget cuts in decades. What do you think all of those budget cuts will do to the economy?

#8) In March, the U.S. trade deficit widened to its highest level since December 2008. Month after month after month we buy much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. Wealth is draining out of the United States at an unprecedented rate. So is the fact that the gigantic U.S. trade deficit is actually getting bigger a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?

#9) Considering the fact that the U.S. government is projected to have a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit in 2010, and considering the fact that if you went out and spent one dollar every single second it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars, how can anyone in their right mind claim that the U.S. economy is getting healthier when we are getting into so much debt?

#10) The U.S. Treasury Department recently announced that the U.S. government suffered a wider-than-expected budget deficit of 82.69 billion dollars in April. So is the fact that the red ink of the U.S. government is actually worse than projected a good sign or a bad sign?

#11) According to one new report, the U.S. national debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by the year 2015. So is that a sign of economic recovery or of economic disaster?

#12) Monstrous amounts of oil continue to gush freely into the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts are already projecting that the seafood and tourism industries along the Gulf coast will be devastated for decades by this unprecedented environmental disaster. In light of those facts, how in the world can anyone project that the U.S. economy will soon be stronger than ever?

#13) The FDIC’s list of problem banks recently hit a 17-year high. Do you think that an increasing number of small banks failing is a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?

Click here to read the rest.

Comments

[Mark Stevens]

The tax in #5 is for cleanup of oil spills like those in #12 , and is only increasing to 32 cents a barrel, hardly a big tax increase.

[No New Tax]

Mark, Why dont you pay mine then.

[Kenny]

Regarding #1, you can only look at the increase in food stamps as it relates to this downturn. #2-4 is really the same issue. One could argue that an increase in foreclosure filings is a good sign since banks have not been aggressive in the recent past due to their inability to take too many properties. Now with the economy "getting better," banks might be in a position to recover more. #5&12 are the same issue since this huge tax increase (which only represents 0.4% of the cost of oil) is going to be used to clean up the mess. #6-7 are the same issue and have nothing to do with an economic recovery, but rather a product of a recently horrible recession on states that either depend too heavily on the income tax or have been fiscally irresponsible before the downturn. I stopped reading after that because I just couldn't take the misuse of information. As the writer of calulatedriskblog.com once put it (who is also a bear), it is easy for a fairly intelligent person to give figures and facts as to why the economy will do bad in the future, no matter what direction the economy is actually moving. I believe that is the case here.

[roger]

Soupe du jour: Global austerity program.
Free markets do the right thing!
Maximize profits,they do.
Dam the consequences,greed is good !
Shit happens,irrational behavior the leader growled,
stock holders,investors, not to worry.
Tax Payers to the rescue,
into the black hole of bankruptcy,
they parachuted

[mtl]

"hardly a big tax increase"

more regressive taxes are the answer?

my dream is that the govt starts pumping out two rates of taxation...

you can pay a 'liberal' tax, or you can pay the 'conservative' tax.

This is a chance for all the people who laugh of taxes as no big deal, to pay more, voluntarily, demonstrating their faith in a govt that spends by funding 60%, and borrowing the other 40%.

in the grand scheme, I honestly believe that people wouldn't mind taxes, at any rate, IF they actually worked.

so far, they have failed to pay for 13 trillion, with another 50 trillion dollar hole over the next 30 years.

[JA]

How do mainstream academic economists - the ones advising Obama, justify their strategy that the US economy can recover - at all, or faster, or better - by printing more and more paper money, and by digging a deeper and deeper debt hole?

Where has this ever worked anywhere or anytime in the world ??

[JA]

By the way raising gasoline taxes will increase the cost of ALL commodities, including food, raise the cost of commuting to work, and raise the cost of shipping ALL products and services delivered by trucks; which is pretty much EVERYTHING.

This is why raising gasoline taxes IS a big deal and a very bad idea. American families have enough problems making ends meet, without the millionaire fat cat elitists in the US Polituro (aka congress) once again screwing over the working - and productive - people in the USA>

[Darwin]

you can pay a 'liberal' tax, or you can pay the 'conservative' tax.

Let us get one thing straight. The people you and others are calling "liberal" are no such thing. They are leftists. A true liberal would support tax freedom, smaller Federal Government, State's Rights, Property Rights, School Choice and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.