2009-02-15 We're All Swedes Now

2009-02-15 Cujo359 Slobber and Spittle \US economy\2008 financial meltdown\2009 US stimulus package http://cujo359.blogspot.com/2009/02/were-all-swedes-now.html "We're All Swedes Now" We're All Swedes Now  The irresponsibility required to create so much bad debt is breathtaking. According to the CIA World Factbook entry for the United States, our total gross domestic product was about $14.5 trillion last year. The sums Richardson and Roubini are talking about come to more than half of that. Needless to say, the banks and other financial institutions deserve much of the blame. They're not the only ones, however. As I've written before, some of the blame goes to Congress and previous presidential administrations for allowing the industry to go unmonitored for so long. But then, we Americans are the ones who, as a group, continued to borrow even when we shouldn't, and we are also the ones who didn't pay enough attention to what our government was doing. In the end, the responsibility is ours.

We were also the ones who allowed our manufacturing and services industries to be shipped overseas. Rather than fix the environmental problems with the semiconductor and steel industries, we let them be shipped elsewhere. The employment that created the highest-paying jobs for us working stiffs were shipped to countries that didn't bother to enforce employment laws, and took a dim view of labor unions. Now we know the answer to a question that's been on my mind for some time: How can an economy cast off its ability to make things, and instead live on ever-cleverer "financial instruments" and "intellectual property" to sustain itself?

The answer is now clear: It can't.

My entirely uninformed opinion is that what we're going to see is our perceived economy and wealth shrinking to something close to its true size. That process in itself won't be pretty, but we can make it a less painful one. The question is whether Americans will take their attention away from chicks in bikinis, celebrity gossip, and other meaningless tripe long enough to make those decisions.

&ldquo;How can an economy cast off its ability to make things, and instead live on ever-cleverer "financial instruments" and "intellectual property" to sustain itself? ... The answer is now clear: It can't.&rdquo;   