The economy is headed South because the politics is headed Left.

I AGREE

Sorry guys, with respect, I don't think its either left or right. I think it's those ambidextrous people in government and the corporate world whose 'bottom line' keeps sliding into their own pockets. What's sadly missing is good old fashioned integrity! I find it highly ironic that we are suppose to be living in a 'service economy' yet no one wants to provide service. What's that about? "Just sign those people up for another monthly payment." What a business strategy! ...that felt good. Thanks

By the way, it's not going to get better for quite a while. My guess is at least through this year. Settle what you owe and tighten your belts. Bartering is good too!

What really angers me is that those crooks who were pushing those unmanageable mortgages will away with it. Where's the justice? Where's the accountability?

Integrity ? ..that has been missing since Dwight Eisenhower !

Unfortunately, the citizens enmass have gotten exactly what they asked for "gimmie-gimmie" .. because I deserve it ..

The USA is a debtor nation .. and when the debt gets to high..the shit hits the fan ..

The national debt, the personal debt, the moral debt, the religious debt, ..this nation owes so much debt ..it is pathetic !

The smart and lucky ones ..practiced self preservation and have insulated themselves from the "lack of Integrity !

Froggy

OK, I'll just copy and paste what I put in Hufff/Wooz.

Naw, what kicked us in our financial shins was gas prices.

The big oil companies announced they had record profits, right? That's because they've been artificially jacking the prices on us. (Hence the profits) When gas prices go up, everything that is shipped via truck has to go up too.

When you're paying a dollar a gallon more for gas than you were two years ago, two dollars more than you were paying five years ago, then your grocery bill doubles it gets harder and harder to pay the mortgage.

Yes, the mortgage lenders loaned money to people that could barely pay it back, but everything going up in price pushed them over their budgets.

And it all trickled down from there. We spend less on luxury items because we need milk and eggs. Stock in those markets drops. We get where we can't meet our mortgage, so stock in the lending institutions drops. Then jumpy idiots on Wall Street get jumpy and start pulling their money and sinking it into gold (hitting $1000 an ounce last week, it was only $150 in 1992).

All because the senate hearings two years ago turned into a big joke and Big Oil only got slapped with having to turn a small percentage (either 2 or 4%, I can't remember which) over to 'charity.'

There is the source to our recession. The national debt is just icing on the cake because of Georgie getting spend-happy in Iraq.

wmans said "The economy is headed South because the politics is headed Left."

I don't know where you live but the economy in the Northeast has been in a depression/recession since September 11th, 2001, when NYC lost 175,00 technology jobs in the metropolitan area. I was in technology at the time and it had already slowed after the stock market bubbles of 2000, but it has never recovered in the North, nor statistically in the U.S.

It has nothing to do with left or right, especially since "the right" has been in power for 8 years. It has much more to do with not doing anything, period. There has been no economic vision for 8 years from anyone - Left or Right. Wman, you are retired and you should be thankful because the long-term prospects have thinned out for the U.S.

Statistically, this decline started during the Reagan administration, when the Republicans decided that manufacturing industries were not in the foreseeable future for the U.S. and the goal became switching to a "service" economy. Over time, we switched to a "consumer spending" economy that was merely tripped up by the Oil Shock. I am sure the disinvestments in the economy that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have brought about may have contributed to its decline as well. Right now, the best job prospects are in the U.S. military...