Sunday, July 24, 2011

Rick Wolff: Ongoing Crisis and Liberal Blindness

The double dip of this crisis is upon us. The latest data agree: the housing market has been in full double-dip mode for five months as home prices keep declining. The foreclosure disaster keeps increasing the combination of homeless families and empty homes. Think capitalist efficiency. Unemployment rose back above 9% again. The average length of unemployment is now 39.7 weeks, the longest since these records began in 1948. Investments by businesses are decelerating and governments keep dropping workers...

...The so-called "recovery" benefited US banks, larger corporations, and the stock market. It bypassed everyone else and is now over. Still wondering what hit them, victims of the crisis -- the mass of working people -- now face paying for that recovery. "Their" government borrowed massively to bail out the corporations. That boosted the national debt. And that now "requires" cutting government spending by "absolutely necessary" reductions in government jobs, services, social security, Medicaid and Medicare. What money the government saves by cutting public services it can then turn over to the corporations, the rich, and the foreign governments (led by China) who lent it the funds to produce that short-lived recovery (for them).
Read the rest here.

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