Economic meltdown? 'Bad Money', Kevin Phillips, and Sharks in the Tank

i think the currency base needs to be altered.

Does altering the "currency base" mean that dollars would not be the standard of international trade? Perhaps you can explain that, and what the consequences would be. Thanks.

Let just say that Ronald Reagan was very wrong in 1980 when he said "government is not the solution, it is the problem". That belief led to deregulation of everything possible and we are now reaping the harvest of that belief. Reagan only started it and all Presidents since have gone along, even Bill Clinton. I see the results of this policy at least once a week in a very small but obvious way. I live about 30 miles outside of Nashville and go there on I40 at least once a week. In the last 30 that highway has become almost impossible to travel because since the trucking industry was deregulated in the early 80's the number of trucks on that highway has skyrocketed. usually there are about 3 cars to every truck. The trucks tear up the pavement (and do not pay nearly enough taxes to repair what they destroy), cause accidents, slow traffic, and generally waste fuel that could be used much more wisely on railroads. I know this is small in the scale of things but it is a perfect example of where we went wrong.

An economy needs to based on goods produced. The farmers have been telling you this for years. What does the US produce? Is it enough to sustain the economy? If not then you have to readjust. You cannot have an instant knee-jerk reaction of Not in My Backyard when it comes to heavy industry, mining, forestry or any fundamental country building and sustaining business. If there are environmental concerns, then deal with it. NO MORE ROADBLOCKS!

Mining and forest use are inherently destructive unless placed under tight limits. Countries such as Japan and Israel have minimal natural resources but manage to do well through excellent imagination and execution of products that the world wants, and careful use of their own resources.

Denmark imports no foreign energy, has a 1.6% unemployment rate, a great social service network such as national healthcare, has no net national debt and is projected as totally debt-free by 2015 (I have to admit that I do not understand some of the distinctions I read i.e. "public sector debt" vs "national debt" -- but see Wikipedia article as one of many sources). But they are on the way to being debt-free. Compare this to the United States. Now of course the scales of economy are different, but Denmark after the oil embargo of the 1970s has worked on a straight path toward energy independence and are now reaping numerous benefits. It is short-sighted leadership in the United States, by all the so-called leaders, that has allowed us to slide into this swamp of fraud and manipulation. The land of the free and the home of the brave has slowly drifted into being the land of the ultra rich and the home of the struggling 98% of the rest of us.

So, mterri, can we say that failure to do more mining and oil extraction is the answer. OK, drill for a little more oil - but what about becoming the world technology leaders in wind, photovoltaic, geothermal, tidal and wave energy? Those industries are the way of the future, and we have barely taken the first step as a national effort. MTerri, I understand you are sincere about not blocking opportunities - I am just saying that there are many other opportunities for the United States that our leaders should be promoting, if they were not bought out by big oil and nuclear money.

You have to understand that I'm not against technology- RIM's doing great and I use their technology. But you've exported a huge portion of your non-technology based labor producing industries and just what do you propose to do with this workforce? Call centers perhaps???

Sweden has a regulated forestry industry that replants as it cuts and it works fine for them. Denmark produces food products that are exported world wide. You can't feed people and grow a healthy economy while you wait for technology to provide jobs. You keep people working now, provide incentives for R&D and incentives for industry to grow here

and if the technology comes along it will succeed be it in energy or anything else. This dogma that mining and forestry are inherently destructive is the thing that is destructive- you can't live or provide for the population of the USA based on promises of future technology. There's technology in use right now that makes it possible to carry on with all of these industries in a nonpolluting fashion but it's not happening and its not because of big oil- its because of the environmental lobby's money. When was the last time a mine went into production in the States? How many years did the environmental assessment review take- 10 years?15 years? Do you want to contribute to the $265 billion annual

trade surplus with China that you have right now because you don't even make your own steel anymore to fix up your bridges, pipelines, etc. necessary to just maintain the infrastructure that you do have. Why don't you just import their laborers too?

If you publish articles with this mind-bent, then you are responsible for adding to the dogma of "industry,mining,forestry, etc. being destructive". This translates into the next generation taking up antidevelopment causes, standing around protesting, instead of making the economy efficient and workable. Instead you've succeeded in pushing industry offshore to places where they don't give a damn about environmental considerations or worker safety or anything else. And then we reap the environmental fallout from unregulated industries in China with melamine in baby food, dog food, etc. Let alone what they're pumping into the atmosphere that continues across the Pacific to here.

We need the jobs in North America. We can do it here and do it clean and properly, but some people just have to get out of the way! That's the message you should be publishing, not this continual drone of future promises and high hopes!

Okay...let me understand this.

>>>The trucking industry was deregulated.

>>>Which means the government got out of the way.

>>>Thus allowing the trucking industry to prosper.

>>>And you think it's a bad thing.

Very interesting logic.