Recession?

We’re not in a recession.

Forget about the fact that the US Government, in debt beyond anybody’s ability to fathom, is coming up with hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out banks and insurance companies that have fallen on hard economic times.

We’re not in a recession.

Pay no mind to the cost of fuel, the loss of jobs and the stasis of wages.

We’re not in a recession.

Foreclosures? Housing crisis? Lending Crunch?

We’re not in a recession.


Apparently they covered denial in the more advanced economics courses I didn’t take in college because all of these so-called experts and politicians absolutely refuse to use the “R” word. Well I have another “R” word for them: retarded.

I’m just a regular working stiff like everybody else. I don’t know that much about the economy but I do know a thing or two about bullshit and that’s what all of these experts seem to be feeding us. For some reason they seem to believe that admitting that the economy is in dire straits will make matters worse. So they refuse to attach the word recession to our current state of affairs.

To me it’s insulting. So it’s my fault I haven’t seen a significant raise in three years? It’s my fault that I haven’t been able to build my personal savings outside of my 401(k)? There’s nothing wrong with the system, it’s me that’s broken. That’s what they’re saying, right?

All the people I know who are out of work, the realtors who haven’t seen a commission check in eight months and the people lining up outside the temporary services office are all victims of their own stupidity then. We’re just experiencing a minor “adjustment” everything is fine. Go back to work, live long and prosper.

Get real. We are in a recession and you can hang that on George W. Bush. His economic policies have stimulated greed and economic stagnation and the massive debt he is running up will make it impossible for future presidents to provide Americans with significant tax relief.

When Bill Clinton took office in the early 1990s we were in the midst of a recession. George H W Bush took the heat for the failures of Reaganomics and Clinton focused on economic change when he ran for office. He fought to have his economic policies enacted and by the time his second term began things were much improved. The economy was fantastic from the mid through the late 90s.

Things cooled off quickly when George W. Bush took over. A Republican Congress forced a deregulation bill through that effectively created the loopholes necessary for things the Enron disaster. High level executives were simply able to fudge numbers and shift assets in a manner that eventually hurt the economy. Even before the 9-11 attacks in 2001 the economy had drastically cooled because Bush’s economic plan had stymied growth in favor of greed.

Unfortunately Bush has managed to avoid being held accountable for his economic policies. He was able to hide behind 9-11 and religious values throughout his presidential career and most people bought it. Now, at the end of his term we’re seeing economic pillars topple before our eyes and Bush doesn’t have to do a thing about it. Worse, as a lame duck president he is in a position to do even more damage and leave the next president holding the bag.

You don’t have to be an economist to realize just how bad things have become. These are tough times and it looks like things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Not calling it a recession isn’t going to change that.