Deja Vu all over again…

I feel qualified to comment on the current state of the economy. After all, I work, pay taxes, and buy stuff and my birthday is October 29, the day of the “great stock market crash of 1929”.

I have lived through although I don’t remember…
Recession of 1949
Recession of 1953
Recession of 1958

I lived through and remember…
Recession of 1960–61
Recession of 1969–70
1973–75 recession
Early 1980s recession
Early 1990s recession
Early 2000s recession

and I am still living through…
Great Recession of 2007

Looks like we have an economic downturn approximately every ten years. What’s wrong with this picture? Obviously we forget ANY lessons learned and it takes about ten years for us to lose our memories. That’s long enough for a new generation of hot shots on Wall Street and in the banking system (who are too young to remember the last recession) to experiment with “new products” that do the same “old thing”. They make tons-o-money at first like a great Ponzi scheme and then the “house of cards” implodes. As long as the hot shots are increasing the bottom line, old timers who have seen this “circus” before will look the other way. Almost everyone who got hooked on this brand of economic “kool-aid” became adversely affected by these toxic assets created by the “Masters of the Universe”. The phrase “Masters of the Universe” rings like a video game and most of these whiz kids grew up on WII’s. So they are used to taking chances in the virtual world where no one really gets hurt. But they have now brought that attitude into a flesh and blood market where lots of real people’s assets are at real risk. Where are the “masters” now? Who knows? They created the monster so why should they hang around to be devoured by the beast? Their sense of culpability is negligible. Game over. I wonder if they considered that their parents might have made investments in the stock market and that the failure of these financial "games" could bankrupt their retirements? Probably not.

A different view, in English too!

I used to listen to BBC America, thinking that I was getting more of a worldview of the news of the day. Since I don’t speak another language fluently, it seemed logical to me. Now I listen to THE BBC and there is a decidedly different flavor to the questions asked and to reporting of the effect America’s policies have on European and other world countries. Their journalists are much more aggressive when questioning heads of companies or heads of state. NPR (formerly National Public Radio, a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States - according to Wikipedia) interviewers are professional and deferential when interviewing politicians or CEOs for a story. The journalists at NPR have lost much of that in depth, pry it out of them, word it so they have to respond, challenge the bastards attitude they used to have. I have been listening to NPR since the 70s. I noticed a distinct difference in the quality of the broadcasting when the George W. Bush administration was in power. It appeared to me that there was a distinct lack of real reporting that was anything like that which I had heard from the NPR of old or from THE BBC. I always thought that NPR was above any blackmail or political influence. I guess I was wrong. The Bush administration tried to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting every year. In 2005 the congress proposed deep cuts to PBS stations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, essentially muzzling any real reporting on the administration or any of its policies by NPR which receives funding from the CPB. That appears to be political blackmail to me. Americans have no idea how much credibility and good will we lost overseas during those 8 years. And yet no one here was reporting the awful truth that the Bush administration was destroying much of what America had stood for in the world. Our policies were viewed through the distorted lens of a politically stifled, underfunded public media. When there were demonstrations in other parts of the world about US policies, especially regarding the war in Iraq, our news services ignored them. People traveling overseas got an earful. I did when I went to Central America. My good friend who lives in Maryland did when she visited several central European countries. It is scary that our freedom of the press could be so restricted by a determined administration. If it could happen once it could happen again. We need to be more vigilant in the US about ALL our freedoms or we will surely lose them. We need to have a news media in this country that is not state run or sponsored, that gives deference to no administration. Give a listen to the media overseas. We may not like what we hear, but knowledge is power and truth is not held hostage.