Barca said:
To be perfectly honest, as we get deeper and deeper into this economic crisis, it gets harder and harder to forgive the stupidity of the institutions in the US, in particular the insanely leveraged financials, the car companies (who even during boom times were struggling, what did they think would happen when the recession came?) and their respective unions who are now running around blaming everything else under the sun except for themselves.
On the one hand I agree with you.
But on the other hand, what is happening does not have anything to do with the individual business decisions of various companies. Nor does it have anything to do with the US.
Rather it is a global phenomana.
The US GDP shrank by 3.8% annualized in the 4th qtr. Europe shrank by 6%! Japan shrank by 12.7%!!
The US has a planned deficit of approx 8% of GDP this year. But so also does Russia! (and they don't have an $800b stimulus package, nor a wealth of social systems and income replacement programs).
I don't claim to understand exactly how this all started. Some say it is a natural process from integrating the many emerging economies into the global economy over the past 20 years. Other say it came from consumer wages not increasing in proportion to efficiencies over the past 20 years, and thus resorting to credit to maintain their spending.
I dunno.
But it seems like the writing is on the wall about what we can expect over the next five years. And ironically, I think the US will do MUCH better than most others.
