Oh Yeah, About That Recession

I'm just bracing myself for tomorrow.

Fears that the United States is in a recession reverberated around the world on Monday, sending stock markets from Frankfurt to Bombay into a tailspin and puncturing the hopes of many investors that Europe and Asia will be able to sidestep an American downturn.

On a day when United States markets were closed in observance of Martin Luther King’s Birthday, the world’s eyes were trained nervously on the United States. Investors reacted with what many analysts described as panic to the multiplying signs of weakness in the American economy.

I guess Mr. Bush's economic stimulus plan was met with rave reviews, ay?

It's really not much of a prediction to consider tomorrow to be Black Tuesday. We have fundamental problems in the economy that giving a few hundred dollars to people won't be able to fix. It may prop up consumer spending for about a month, but that's it. The answer lies in actively examining the excesses of the market, and, as Hillary Clinton says, bringing it back into balance.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said that if she became president, the federal government would take a more active role in the economy to address what she called the excesses of the market and of the Bush administration [...]

She said that economic excesses — including executive-pay packages she characterized as often “offensive” and “wrong” and a tax code that had become “so far out of whack” in favoring the wealthy — were holding down middle-class living standards.

“If you go back and look at our history, we were most successful when we had that balance between an effective, vigorous government and a dynamic, appropriately regulated market,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And we have systematically diminished the role and the responsibility of our government, and we have watched our market become imbalanced.”

She added: “I want to get back to the appropriate balance of power between government and the market.”

Exactly. But unfortunately for all of us, it'll be a year before that balance can reasonably be put into place. And that could be catastrophic for a lot of people. Until then, we'll get solutions like "just work two jobs, lazybones!"