Even as evidence mounts that the Great Recession has finally released its chokehold on the American economy, experts worry that the recovery may be weak, stymied by consumers’ reluctance to spend.
Given that consumer spending has in recent years accounted for 70 percent of the nation’s economic activity, a marginal shrinking could significantly depress demand for goods and services, discouraging businesses from hiring more workers.
“Lower-income households can’t borrow, and higher-income households no longer feel wealthy,” Mr. Zandi (chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com) added. “There’s still a lot of debt out there. It throws a pall over the potential for a strong recovery. The economy is going to struggle.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/business/economy/29consumer.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
Why is the "New Normal" so difficult to even acknowledge, never mind embrace? It's as though everyone is waiting for the "old ways" to return -- rather than encouraging, supporting, and bolstering this apparent 90 degree shift in the American Way of Life.
Stumble It!
Ed Deak.
What these fools don;t realize is that when the spending goes up, so does pollution, depletion and the self destruction of the human race, buried in garbage, chemicals in the bloodstreams and hospitals bursting with epidemics that didn't exist before.
Ed Deak.
That's why they make the "circulation" button for the AC in the SUVs. So you don't have to deal with the pollution while hauling back the new 62 inch plasma!
Recovery!? Take your time, I like my variable mortgage rate at 1.7%, pretty soon the bank will be paying me to live at my place
What these fools don;t realize is that when the spending goes up, so does pollution, depletion and the self destruction of the human race, buried in garbage, chemicals in the bloodstreams and hospitals bursting with epidemics that didn't exist before.
NIMBY, Ed. The human race by-and-large, can't see (or smell) beyond it's proverbial nose. It may have worked t one point in our early history, but the long-range effects we are beginning to have on the biosphere are demanding we think at least http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Minutes_into_the_Future
And I don't knowe if we are capable of even that..........certainly the rightwingnuts aren't.
That, and a soggy commercial property market, high unemployment, spending cut backs by states and municipalities, slow investment by the business sector and retaliation by other countries to the Buy America policies.
Brent
The way cosumers are so Pavlovian in their reactions, I'd say this entire environmental thing is a charade.
Are we really so stupid and short-sighted (sheeple)that we actually need to be led to the "promised land" -- and once there have the fear of God's Green Gestapo put into us so we don't screw up and get kicked out of Eden the Sequel?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... rench.html
Or this (from Harper's Weekly):
A deaf, blind, 16-year-old dog named Louie died after being left alone for hours in the hot car of Robin Starr, CEO of the Richmond, Virginia, SPCA.
Brent
My father said those who went to the cites looking for work starved, while those who stayed out of town ate well.
It will happen again.
Brent