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Obama and Geithner – The Economic Fix has Failed!!

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Jeffrey Rock
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Watching how the Obama and Geithner economic stimulus plan has utterly failed, one thing is clear--all the geniuses in Washington and Wall Street have absolutely no idea what they are doing. It is not surprising.

In spite of the devastating and far-reaching impact of the failed US economy, there is an extreme absence of discussion and debate about the true causes. The mainstream media is full of one-liner sound bites that ostensibly get to the root of the problem. We are told that the people who bought mortgages and could not afford them are to blame. We are told that AIG's sale of credit default swaps is the cause. We are told that Wall Street bankers lent money they knew would not be paid back, just so they could earn large commissions and bonuses. We are told that the rating agencies that over-rated the soundness of credit default swaps and their underlying real estate are the problem.

But none of this is the true cause of our economic woes, and tinkering with bailouts will never solve the problem, only make it worse. Wall Street, AIG and the subprime mortgages only played a small part in this economic fiasco. In fact, they were the result of the true and underlying larger problem. No one has addressed yet the true, larger and underlying problem--not even the famous Nobel prize-winning Paul Krugman.

As job losses continue to accelerate--don't pay attention to those phony reports and phony statistics showing that a recovery is taking place or that the downfall is slowing--it is plain and clear that our leaders are leading us into a worse situation than if they did nothing. Their ignorance is massive and historical. Obama and Geithner are playing the lead roles in wiping out the US economy, once and for all.

The single largest contributor to the economic failure of the US is NAFTA and similar agreements that force US employees to compete with foreign workers who make between $1.50 and $3.00 per day. However, liberals resist anything that would impugn the historical reputation of Clinton. They proclaim Clinton was a great economic leader and they point to the massive surplus that the US had when Clinton left the White House.

The Chinese fueled Clinton's apparent economic success, not the ostensive 'sound' economic policies Clinton practiced. Because of NAFTA, US manufacturers were able to export virtually the entire US manufacturing sector to other nations where there are no labor or environmental protection laws. Clinton should have insisted on worker protection and environmental protection as a part of the NAFTA agreement. Their products can then be imported back to the US without any taxation whatsoever. This makes the tax giveaway of $1.3 trillion by Bush look like a dust mote. Any manufacturer that did not export their manufacturing capabilities to Asia and instead stayed here in the US eventually was forced out of business. Americans are too ignorant to understand the connection between Walmart style cheap prices and their own loss of jobs. They are much more interested in getting cheap goods than making the effort to connect the dots. So only cheap goods were sold. Every other manufacturer in the US was run out of business.

Americans are finally paying the price for NAFTA and the slew of "free trade" agreements that followed in its wake. Clinton cannot take the sole blame. NAFTA was written by Republicans and voted in within the first few days of Clinton's administration. Clinton signed it without any debate. Americans are paying the price for Republican and Democrat complicity in the biggest crime perpetrated on US citizens in history. Both parties are captives of a new breed of global oligarchs. These oligarchs pay them and own them. They cannot get elected without them.

Regardless of how many times Americans say they do not like the influence of big money in political campaigning, they fall for it every time. Whoever spends the most money wins the elections. American voters support this system without fail, all while claiming they do not. The media have succeeded is completely fooling Americans. Yet Americans, ironically, still believ
Because the Chinese lent hundreds of billions of dollars to the US, the true state of affairs was hidden. US wages and salaries have been falling for almost 40 years without cessation. The banking and subprime scandal was simply an outcome of the deteriorating income of Americans.

When the system could no longer uphold the issuance of yet more credit, it all came down like a house of cards. It was obvious long before the fall of 2008. Home prices had already been declining for over a year and interest rates were still very low. That should have translated into buying, according to traditional economic theory. However, buying slowed down during the first two quarters of 2008--long before the now famous September 2008 crash.

In the background sit the oligarchs, collecting massive profits from the downfall of the US economy. The oligarchs do not want us to understand what is really happening. If we understood we could actually do something about it. So they instruct their reporters on CNN, ABC, MSNBC and their affiliates to mislead us.

The hard facts are that unless we change the free trade arrangements, our economy will not recover until US wages are competitive with those paid in Vietnam, China, Mexico and similar third world and developing nations. The math dictates that it be so. One cannot argue with the math.

What Americans need to realize is as long as they vote for Democrats and Republicans they will continue to lose jobs, lose income and lose everything else for which we have worked for generations to achieve. How does it sound to make $1.50 per day? Not good? Too bad! Get used to it! That is where we are headed.

The liberal left is equally to blame. Liberals support large corporations. They refuse to boycott because "It will hurt people jobs!" This logic is full of holes because failure to rein in the oligarchs has cost far more jobs than any boycott. Liberals love to "Write their Congresspersons!" They also love to hold rallies and march around with flags and banners. These feeble actions have done nothing to stop the slide towards fascism and oligarchy. They are foolhardy attempts that only emphasize how weak and powerless US citizens have become. Who cares if they are ineffectual, impotent and have totally failed to achieve any economic or social change?

So what is the solution? We have to rebuild American manufacturing and American jobs. To do that we must dismantle the free trade agreements. Until this takes place, Americans will continue to lose jobs at staggering rates and the economy will tumble farther and farther into the abyss. Our economy is headed towards the status of a developing nation and will never return to the point where it can employ 96% of Americans in decent paying jobs. That part of history may never be seen again unless we do something effective and more powerful than writing our Congresspersons or holding rallies waving banners.

By the time our economy falls yet further into disarray the news media will convince us that the real reason for our economic woes is because we are lazy, or we are stupid, or we are uneducated or some such other lie. After they take over there is no telling when they will let go of power. During these future times you can be 100% certain that liberties, freedoms and human rights will be ravaged and will exist no longer.
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An economist for 34 years I have remained committed to social justice and economic equality for as long. As long as we keep voting in Tweedly-Demos and Tweedly-Repugs nothing will change. The only way we can affect the political structure is to (more...)
 
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