Economy Just Keeps Getting Worse

Bush keeps telling us the economy is strong -- that we're just experiencing a little downturn and everything will be alright. After everyone gets their $600 checks, they'll run out and spend and the economy will bounce back. I'm beginning to think the man is a simpleton.

Gas and food prices are at record high levels. Housing starts have dropped by 36% and foreclosures are at a record level. Over a million more people will lose their homes this year. Food banks can't keep up with the ever-increasing demand. Wages are stagnant, and going down when adjusted for inflation. And an unnecessary war is sucking billions of dollars out of our economy every week.

But things can always get worse. It was just announced that our economy lost another 80,000 jobs in March. It marked the third straight month that more jobs were lost than were created. The total for the three month period is 232,000 jobs lost.

The unemployment rate has jumped from 4.8% in February to 5.1% in March. That is the highest it has been since September 2005 (after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita). And that doesn't count the many whose benefits have run out and have lost hope of finding work.

It's no longer a question of whether we are in a recession or not. The only person who doesn't think so is Bush. What we need to know now is whether this will be a short-lived recession or something even worse. I'm thinking it'll be "even worse".

Many economists are predicting the worst "recession" since the end of World War II. I think many people are just afraid to use the word "depression", but that's what it's beginning to look like.

We have been told that because of new regulations, another depression couldn't happen. Supposedly banks and their investors are protected now, but we just saw a giant investment bank go under recently and their investors lost millions. We tend to forget that Republicans have been deregulating things right and left for their rich friends.

The Republican policy has been to ignore the huge income gap between the rich and the rest of us, and continue to change laws and regulations to pump ever more money to the rich. These policies have set the United States up for an economic disaster.

The only question now is whether it's too late to stop it. It certainly won't be stopped by the $600 checks.