Newsflash: American Economy Sucks

Whenever your currency is within a few cents of the Canadian dollar you know your GDP growth is remedial at best. As in 'it does not read well'.

As 2009 comes to a close, the rising tide of unemployment is flooding the basement. From coast to coast half finished houses are rotting, visited by contractors only late at night while they empty liquor bottles or weep behind the steering wheel of a $750/month truck payment.

Oil is only low for the moment because even China has taken a shot to the gut. The second they turn the lights back on over there we all know gas prices are going European for all of us (joy!) and even the most tightly belted of us will feel like their pants are sitting on their ankles. Why us? What did we ever do to deserve this? Well hmmm.



It was pointed out to me that although the US was experiencing decent GDP growth annually since the late 90s, if you factored out the equity loans we were taking out every year, we actually were totally stale—that’s right; the only black ink was created by Americans signing over the small piece of their houses they might have had a chance at hanging on to.

The global loan sharks of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase and Citi were all too happy to 'help'. Like any shitty scheme, it worked well when everything was doing well..there is money that can be ‘Madoff’ with. Housing valuations (approved by above listed loan sharks of course) were increasingly surreal starting in the mid to late 90s with no end in sight. You couldn't spend your home's estimated appreciated value fast enough! But then it slowed. And then people started noticing they couldn't sell their house in 1 day for 10% more than asking price. Then it got ugly.

People had to actually think about resale and reasonable buying prices. This caused home sales to grind to a halt. New construction became a historical concept. Plumbers, gouging us all for $90/hr and the electricians they drink with starting at 2pm on weekdays began to get grim and talk about how they were going to have to cut back on their spending.

Eavesdropping bartenders were appropriately scared shitless at this.

Mortgages that were never meant to be paid came due and went unpaid. Someone yelled out the word 'toxic' and it broke an uneasy silence into pandemonium. Bankers gouging us for 29%/year and the congressman they drink with starting at 2pm on weekdays came up with a plan to save...us.

Eavesdropping bartenders were appropriately scared shitless at this.

Congress decided to take a pile of tax money and gave it to banks to make sure that they would still get paid for the houses we were walking away from.

For a while it was like an 8th grade dance with the bankers on one side and potential post TARP borrowers on the other. Ben Bernanke was trying to get them to mingle, but there was nothing doing--both sides were aware of the boners, but no one was quite sure how to deal with them.

And so the bailout money largely remains locked up at Rupert Murdoch's summer house. The acne and braces of the ‘subprime’ image have tarnished us all. The banks see us as a teeming mass of zombies writhing on their front steps--we all have bad credit now or just need money and those are the last two groups of people you ever want to lend money to.

Of course, any good liberal will tell you it is physically impossible for one to 'pull himself up by his own bootstraps' anyway, so this TARP thing never had a snowball's chance in hell even if it were meant to help in the first place. Bottom line: We are still screwed until our middle class society, our whole culture, makes major changes in its spending habits.

It is your fault Average Joe. Put a dollar in your friggin' savings account and stay in to watch basic cable for one night in your life. Drive the same car long enough to not have a payment and then be proud of that for Christ’s sake!

When you break your credit card out to buy something ask yourself if you would still buy it on a desert island--if a mental picture of any neighbor you've ever had pops up when you get the purchasing impulse condition yourself to associate a second, related picture. It is of you and me working side by side in a giant call center answering technical support calls for the Chinese--what type of car do you think you'd be able afford in that scenario?