Monday, September 10, 2007

It's STILL the Economy, Stupid! - Vol. 3 #87

Over 15 years have passed since James Carville posted his famous Clinton Presidential campaign reminder and rallying cry: “It’s the economy, stupid!” It is true that Clintonian economics were far from perfect. Yet compared to the insanity of Bush’s 6 plus years of war on the American middle and working class, the U.S. economy during the Clinton years seems like a lost paradise. Unfortunately, the most of the current crop of 2008 presidential candidates seldom mention the economy. Only John Edwards has consistently presented a strong progressive critique of the madness that now passes for American policy. Edwards seems to be the only candidate who understands that the narrow prosperity of the Bush years is destroying the real basis of American wealth and prosperity. As corporations and the super-rich gain control over more financial assets, and “deregulation” and “globalism” are used to “restructure” U.S. manufacturing capability (i.e., moving factories offshore to enable corporations to lower overhead attributable to labor), the American Dream is under siege.

Recent economic news has been unsettling. The so-called “sub-prime mortgage crisis” has morphed into a much greater threat to the credit markets and is now effecting the ability of Wall Street to do its favorite thing: securitize debt and then sell it to the suckers. Despite the continuing nasty spectacle of the failure of 2 generations of economic conservativism, I am actually more optimistic now than I have been for at least the last 10 years. It seems clear to me that the American People are finally coming to understand bullshit when they hear it. As the schools continue to fail, the roads and bridges deteriorate, one-third (1/3) of the nation has no medical insurance and one-quarter (1/4) of our children are malnourished, the depravity and moral bankruptcy of the anti-government crowd is clear for all to see. Hopefully, working Americans will once again respond to Carville’s (modified) rallying cry: “IT’S STILL THE ECONOMY, STUPID!”

With apologies to John Maynard Keynes, I remain

Savant