Year 9-11
Barack Hussein Obama is now the 44th president of the United States, an exceptional man called to serve in exceptional times, facing exceptional challenges.
Until the World Trade Center calamity, President Bush was just hanging in there, only half-heartedly engaged for failure of a focus. Then Osama struck and from there on terror defined his tenure, even invading Iraq under that banner.
We now have Obama. We already know what will define his presidency. We can already state that “What Osama was to Bush is what the Bust will be to Obama.”
Let me go back some 80 years, to the onset of the First Bust, 1929, a year when unemployment was only 3.3 percent, which almost tripled the next year to 8.9, followed by 15.9 percent in 1931, 23.6 thereafter, reaching a high of 24.9 in 1933.
We now have an official 7.2 percent of unemployed in the USA, which omits those whose benefits have expired, fails to count the people who have given up looking for work and disregard those who want full-time jobs but can secure only part-time. When these are included we arrive at 13.5 percent, approaching Depression levels.
Recessions are natural phenomena. Once overproduction and too much inventory have gone through their cycle, matters revert to normal. However, a Depression doesn’t cure itself, all too evident from the frantic efforts to reverse the current trend.
The 1930’s Depression was bailed out by World War 2. In 1942 everybody had a job, thanks to the production of tanks, warships, planes, bombs, with many millions in the armed forces. The war made America the industrial and financial powerhouse of the world. During it the USA financed Britain and later helped out Germany and Japan. Large deficits then were not devastating, due to the high domestic savings rate.
The difference between 1929 and 2009 cannot be greater.
Going into the Dirty Thirties people were thrifty: no credit cards circulating, no liar’s loans lurking. Most houses were paid for. People had close-knit families, were informed, relied on self-help, eager to learn, willing to be led, mainly rurally based.
During World War 2 Texas was gushing with oil, Fort Knox was overflowing with gold. The word pollution had not yet been invented. Every country in the world looked to Uncle Sam for a loan.
The difference between 1929 and 2009 cannot be greater.
Now the trillions of US dollars aimed as medicine for the melt-down are all borrowed from abroad, while the American family structure is fragile, peoples’ needs more extravagant, savings non-existent, debts abound, their fixed expense- cell or land line phone, internet, cable or satellite service – high, their general level of knowledge low, their prejudices and beliefs anti-intellectual, their survivor skills minimal, their tolerance of hardship shallow, mainly city-based and threatened by environmental dangers and shortages.
Where will those borrowed trillions go? Fattening the rich, Wall Street, the Stock brokers and banks whose stupidity and greed caused
this crisis in the first place?
Catapulting piles of cash into the pockets of plutocrats pre-supposes that the crisis is an economic one. It is not. Parachuting trillions into a moribund system is like keeping a brain-dead person artificially alive. With the monetary system already on life support, giving it a transfusion with exactly the same toxic substances that caused its illness in the first place, will lead to a certain death.
We need a fundamentally new direction. The death of 40 million human beings during World War 2 was the price paid to cure the last Depression. This was followed by an all-compassing cosmic war on creation, threatening even more casualties, unless we make peace with our planet.
We need a total new strategy that first of all recognizes that Climate Change- also giving record cold- is the great threat. Coping with diminishing resources- even when gas sells below cost – is next. We then can proceed with healing, which includes extensive re-education how to live without ruining nature even more, and using funds wisely by having rail lines going everywhere and bus routes connecting small communities.
Today’s situation reminds me of a little ditty written by James Taylor, part of his “Traffic Jam” song.
Now I used to think that I was cool
Running around on fossil fuel
Until I saw what I was doin’
Was driving down the road to ruin.
Now is the time to replace machine power with man power, globalization with localization. Time is not money: all need a fair wage. The hour has come to recognize that our current way of life is unsustainable, that a totally new approach is needed, if an all-inclusive Bust is to be avoided.
Does Obama see the true picture? What is certain is that ‘as Osama defined Bush, so will this Bust define Obama.’