The smartest talking heads are at the Federal Reserve Bank. Unfortunately, they are a very biased opinion group. Before they became paid insiders they would have said one thing, now they say what the boss tells them to say.
Maybe you should do some research on what the Federal Reserve Board is and what thier role has been in creating this "debtor society". Now we have adds talking about credit card debt etc. hounding you, like its a thing.
Credit card debt is the result of
overspending. Period.
Understand this, the
FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD IS NOT A fEDERAL AGENCY. Everyone needs to understand the problem here.
Here is the little guys take on it, let me explain. This is "Class Warfare". I have seen this class war from the bottom of the white class, low income folks. We did own a house so we weren't as low class as the renters. If you don't understand that,you are not in my 'class'. I was born in 1949, just at the end of the baby boom. I remeber discussions of the Korean war and Eisenhour as President. And '
saving bonds'. I don't remember who explained it to me, what I got out of it was, you bought the bonds at a discount, you were in effect loaning the government your money, and at the end of 20 years they would give you back the face value of the bond, like paying you rent on your money. Why? Well because it saves them money. Ok, how does it save them money to pay me interest? Because the interest rate is lower than what they would have to pay to the
federal reserve board to borrow the money to pay the debt for the war. Well what if the interest rate from the
FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD goes down below the 4% they are paying on the bonds? And who is this
FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD ANYWAY?? Do the research, the Federal Reserve Board was created by congress to control our economy, we wanted to control inflation. And the 'Money People', the ones that were so rich they could reposses the government convinced us they were going to benevolently give us thier experience in keeping wages and prices low, yet loan us enough money so we could get some of the things we wanted and the profit machine was created. Now all you have to do to keep it going is continue to help the little poeple out by taking from them in taxes and then loaning it back to them with interest, subsidized by the Federal Government. If this all sounds like voodoo economics to you, you didn't live through it. I remember when Reagan was asked about controlling inflation when he wanted to cut taxes, and his response was 'Well you tell me why, if you let people keep more of thier money and spend it thats inflationary, but if the government takes it from you and spends it thats not inflationary'.
The problem, foreseen by the writers of our constitution, with 'big government' is that it is big business and the chances for waste are much higher, let alone outright fraud.
Anyway, the talking heads say we need to "spend more" or we will fuel a recession. I believe this advise is nuts. We need to start saving a little more and paying down consumer debt.
Now that they have these big government programs in place they ( read we ) have to pay for them. The idea of raising taxes is not palatable, so they have to encourage you to overspend and keep the economy expanding in order to raise enough tax money. When you say the Federal Govenrment is paying for it, pat your wallet, and tell your self thanx for paying for a sculpture called THIS & THAT, doesn't that look nice. And the answer is shop. Its an addiction.
Getting a little production back into the USA would be nice, also. Oh, how can we reduce gasoline prices? Stop buying so much gas. Supply and demand will work for the consumer, and lower the pump price.
We have been duped in all of this. Now that the USA has been sucked dry in the name of this New Global Economy the 'Money People' are pretty much done with us, its cheaper for them to go else were, as long as we protect the and thier investments with our soldiers. Of course this could mean some of them will die protecting 'Our American Way of Life' and if you don't support our troops you are not patriotic. Bullshit, bring them all home, they will be less in harms way here than all over the world. The Iraq war will end or not when we leave. We would not tolerate this on US soil, we have no 'right' to be there. Your statement about gas prices shows a lack of knowledge. I was in Europe in 1999, Italy specifically. Gas was over $.90/ liter then, about $3.50/gallon. They are closer to the oil source than we are, why do we bitch about $3.00/gallon. Well. I do tend to go on a little. VV