America Has No Means to Recover from a Depression
Dustin Ensinger
Speaking in front of members of Congress on Tuesday, economist Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland, said the job loss experienced in November "was much worse than was expected ... The threat of a widespread depression is now real and present." Many economic observers have justifiably stated that the U.S. is in the midst of the greatest recession facing the nation since the Great Depression. On Monday, the National Bureau of Economic Research finally acknowledged what most of Americans have known for some time: that the U.S. is officially in a deep and painful recession. Few, if any, however, will dare to call the current downturn a Depression. Actually, the department responsible for categorizing our economic condition, NEBR, refuses to use the term, although most Americans, judging by what they see and what is happening to them, realize we are truly entering a depression.
"Just as the NBER does not define the term depression or identify depressions, there is no formal NBER definition or dating of the Great Depression," the bureau's website says. It seems that some “experts” are finally starting to recognize the perilous situation that this country faces. Chrysler vice chairman, Jim Press, told reporters after testifying on Capitol Hill that inaction to save the auto industry could trigger a full-blown Depression. "We're on the brink with the U.S. auto manufacturing industry," Press said. "If we have a catastrophic failure of one of these car companies, in this tender environment for the economy, it's a huge blow. It could trigger a [worse] depression." Nobel-Prize winning economist Paul Krugman believes that, while the U.S. may not technically be in a Depression, we have entered a state of “depression economics.” Unfortunately, during the Great Depression we had the capacity to innovate, manufacture and otherwise create wealth that could drag us out of the hole we were in. Today, we no longer have that capability. We have forfeited that ability through disastrous trade policies that have shipped the majority of America’s manufacturing prowess across the border and overseas. Without the capability to manufacture and create wealth, the U.S. will never truly recover. Today we are maintaining our living standards only with imports & through the good graces of our creditors who loan us money. How can our creditors have faith in our credit worthiness when we can only pay them if we can borrow money from someone else to pay them. www.opednews.com/articles/America-Has-No-Means-to-Re-by-Dustin-Ensinger-081208-723.html