Great points were made in John Mulkey's featured post about the false double-dip in the housing market.
"I think when economists start becoming cheerleaders, it becomes very difficult to take them seriously." — That was the comment I left on his post. And it's true!
It seems like the vocal economists of 2009 acted like they had vested interests in the market improving. Certainly, I always ignore government economists, but there were a lot of highly-regarded economists from the private sector who spoke of the "bottom" in 2009 and who look really foolish now.
While economists are basically educated guessers, many of the best ones are usually reliable. I think the way the market has evolved has proved my previous analysis to be true — that we are in such an unusual economic collapse right now that the very fiber of what we believe is under attack.
What do I mean by that?
Well, we have a perfect storm of housing market decline and world economic collapse. Our economy was artificially propped up by an unrealistic housing market boom that lasted longer than anybody had the right to expect.
That boom time helped cover up a change in America's economics that had been taking place since NAFTA was ratified, which shifted jobs away from the U.S. and began the shrinking of our middle class.
People lived off their false home equity instead of their work incomes. Money poured into the economy, creating the illusion of prosperity. And the government is complicit in this creditor economy — borrowing from other industrialized nations like China to cover checks it can't cash — leaving us vulnerable when the bills finally become due.
A lot of this began back in the Reagan administration, when deregulation changed the rules of commerce and made the corporation kind of a mega-business blob — the more it grew, the harder it became to stop.
We now live in an Elitist society that overpays and over-values highly technical skills, and undervalues the other 90 percent of the people in the U.S. who didn't get the memo that they are now basically replaceable servants to the top 10 percent.
That vapor you see is the evaporation of middle-class America.And it's going to get much worse as the cost of higher education explodes to the point that only the children of the rich and powerful will have access to it.
As a society we have freely given up our expectations and hope, many of our liberties, all of our privacy — virtually everything that our founding fathers held dear — for a few shiny trinkets that become obsolete so fast it makes your head spin.
People have become bitter and mean on their way to losing all hope. Most people would rather sue somebody then talk to them. Who needs people when we have fast computers and giant HDTVs in our home to entertain us? We don't value people because we don't have enough face-to-face interaction with them. We are numb because of the over-stimulation technology brings us.
In short, we're right where the government wants us to be. If people don't speak to each other, than how can they rise against the machine?
What amazes me the most is, despite all the serious issues we face, America is still the best country in the world. But the gap is closing fast. Maybe we can save us; I hope it's not too late.
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