Living a lie: Against a worsening manufactured financial crisis that is just beginning another reminder from Global Research!

The country is sinking deeper into an economic hole, and it's likely to stay there for a while. That's part of the latest outlook from forecasters in a survey to be released Monday by the National Association for Business Economics, also known as NABE. Approximately 96 percent of the economists polled believe a recession has started, and nearly three-fourths think it could persist beyond the first quarter of 2009. Under one definition, a recession happens when the economy shrinks for two quarters in a row. The economy contracted 0.3 percent in the third quarter as consumers cut back sharply on spending, the government reported last month. It was the worst showing since 2001, when the country was last in a recession.

NABE economists, among other experts, predict activity will continue to contract in the final quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year as weary consumers hunker down further under the stresses of rising unemployment, shrinking nest eggs and falling home values. "Business economists became decidedly more negative on the economic outlook for the next several quarters as a result of the intensification of credit market stresses and evidence of spillover to the real economy," said NABE president Chris Varvares, president of Macroeconomic Advisers. NABE economists are now forecasting the economy to shrink at a 2.6 percent pace in the final quarter of this year and then at a 1.3 percent pace in the first three months of 2009. The new projections marked downgrades from the association's previous survey, which called for growth of 0.1 percent in the final quarter of this year and 1.3 percent in the following quarter.

Weakest economy since 2001: For all of 2008, the association's economists are predicting the economy's growth will slow to 1.4 percent, down from 2 percent in 2007. If the new, lower projection proves correct, it would mark the weakest performance since 2001. The picture could turn worse in 2009. The NABE economists are projecting the economy will jolt into reverse, shrinking by 0.2 percent for all of next year. If that happens, it would be the worst showing since 1991, when the country was starting to pull out of a recession. With the economy losing traction, the nation's unemployment rate will climb to 7.5 percent by the end of next year, the economists predict. Other analysts think it could rise to 8 percent then, It could hit 10 percent or higher if a U.S. auto company were to go under. Worse economy since 2001 and it is just beginning

I am sick of hearing the Great Depression can not be repeated! This was manufactured by greenspan under Bush, is just beginning, and will be much worse. As I keep saying the timing is no coincidence! Global Research, November 15, 2008:
The financial crisis is deepening, with the risk of seriously disrupting the system of international payments. This crisis is far more serious than the Great Depression. All major sectors of the global economy are affected. Recent reports suggest that the system of Letters of Credit as well as international shipping, which constitute the lifeline of the international trading system, are potentially in jeopardy. The proposed bank "bailout" under the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is not a "solution" to the crisis but the "cause" of further collapse. The "bailout" contributes to a further process of destabilization of the financial architecture. It transfers large amounts of public money, at taxpayers expense, into the hands of private financiers. It leads to a spiraling public debt and an unprecedented centralization of banking power. Moreover, the bailout money is used by the financial giants to secure corporate acquisitions both in the financial sector and the real economy. In turn, this unprecedented concentration of financial power spearheads entire sectors of industry and the services economy into bankruptcy, leading to the layoff of tens of thousands of workers. The upper spheres of Wall Street overshadow the real economy. The accumulation of large amounts of money wealth by a handful of Wall Street conglomerates and their associated hedge funds is reinvested in the acquisition of real assets. Paper wealth is transformed into the ownership and control of real productive assets, including industry, services, natural resources, infrastructure, etc.

Collapse of Consumer Demand: The real economy is in crisis. The resulting increase in unemployment is conducive to a dramatic decline in consumer spending which in turn backlashes on the levels of production of goods and services. Exacerbated by neoliberal macro-economic policy, this downward spiral is cumulative, ultimately leading to an oversupply of commodities. Business enterprises cannot sell their products, because workers have been laid off. Consumers, namely working people, have been deprived of the purchasing power required to fuel economic growth. With their meager earnings, they cannot afford to acquire the goods produced. Overproduction Triggers a String of Bankruptcies: Inventories of unsold goods pile up. Eventually, production collapses; the supply of commodities declines through the closing down of production facilities, including manufacturing assembly plants. In the process of plant closure, more workers become unemployed. Thousands of bankrupt firms are driven off the economic landscape, leading to a slump in production. Mass poverty and a Worldwide decline in living standards is the result of low wages and mass unemployment. It is the outcome of a preexisting global cheap labor economy, largely characterized by low wage assembly plants in Third World countries. The current crisis extends the geographic contours of the cheap labor economy, leading to the impoverishment of large sectors of the population in the so-called developed countries (including the middle classes).

In the US, Canada and Western Europe, the entire industrial sector is potentially in jeopardy. We are dealing with a long-term process of economic and financial restructuring. In its earlier phase, starting in the 1980s during the Reagan Thatcher era, local and regional level enterprises, family farms and small businesses were displaced and destroyed. In turn, the merger and acquisition boom of the 1990s led to the concurrent consolidation of large corporate entities both in the real economy as well as in banking and financial services. In recent developments, however, the concentration of bank power has been at the expense of big business. What is distinct in this particular phase of the crisis, is the ability of the financial giants (through their overriding control over credit) not only to create havoc in the production of goods and services, but also to undermine and destroy large corporate entities of the real economy. Bankruptcies are occurring in all major sectors of activity: Manufacturing, telecoms, consumer retail outlets, shopping malls, airlines, hotels and tourism, not to mention real estate and the construction industry, victims of the subprime mortgage meltdown. General Motors has confirmed that "it could run out of cash within a few months, which could prompt one of the biggest bankruptcy filings in U.S. history". (USNews.com, November 11, 2008)) In turn this would backlash on a string of related industries. Estimates of job losses in the US auto industry range from 30,000 to as much as 100,000.(Ibid This is just beginning1 Check the industries and how wide this will be

*As I keep saying relax, be prepared, stay together, hunker down, and ride this out. We can do it!

James Joiner
Gardner, Ma
www.anaverageopatriot.com