Not exactly. Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin and Iran's ruling mullahs, whose geopolitical ambitions are lubricated by high oil prices, are dismayed, which augments America's stock of happiness.
Gee wouldnt it have been better to have had a democratic administration to have gone green all the way back to the Carter days??All those NEW jobs and companies to invest in HERE IN THE U>S>A>??
Does anyone doubt that Americans consume too much and save too little?
Im sorry but wasnt it BUSH WHO TOLD US TO GO SHOPPING???Now we cant shop OR save.THANKS!!
If you are among the millions who own Wal-Mart stock???either directly or through this or that fund???you are benefiting, as that company is, from the new frugality.
WOW thanks for that not only do we send money to our enenies in the middle east{oil} but we get to also fund chinas military and economy??Im sorry but at what point do you not cheer the destruction of the middle class in this country?I know that the implosion of the car companies with those most hated unions must be giving you the sweetest of dreams{but a middle class nightmare!}.
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The Good Bad News
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Happily, all across America, state lotteries—government mechanisms for fleecing the gullible for the benefit of governments—are suffering because people with shrinking disposable income are dispensing with those instant "scratch" tickets. If you are among the millions who own Wal-Mart stock—either directly or through this or that fund—you are benefiting, as that company is, from the new frugality.
The chief economist for the National Retail Federation expects November-December Christmas sales to decline … not at all. They are expected to rise, but only 2.2 percent over last year's sales. That would be the smallest growth since way back in the grim, hardscrabble days of … 1933? No, 2002 (1.7 percent). A survey of consumers reveals that they plan to … cut back? No, they plan to increase spending on gifts to $832, up just 1.9 percent from last year.
At 8:30 a.m. this Thursday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will announce the economy's third-quarter growth rate. (Second-quarter growth was 2.8 percent.) It is possible that the economy grew, if only slightly. If so, in spite of histrionic talk about a reprise of the Depression, there is still not even a recession, as commonly defined—two consecutive quarters of contraction. Inventories are low, so they will not dampen a recovery when the economy's resilience disappoints those people who are eagerly anticipating capitalism's funeral.
Speaking of Thursdays, if the nation wants a really Rooseveltian intervention, it should have Thanksgiving this Thursday. By 1939, it was clear that the Depression had survived the New Deal's remedies for it: at 17.2 percent, unemployment was higher than in 1931 (15.9). So FDR threw Thanksgiving into his battle to get happy days here again. Inconveniently, 1939's November had five Thursdays, so Thanksgiving was to fall on the 30th day of the month. FDR, who was not inhibited by the Constitution and certainly would not be by the calendar, decreed that Thanksgiving would occur on November's fourth, not its last, Thursday. He thereby added a week to the Christmas shopping season and gave rise to this ditty:
Thirty days hath September
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one,
Until we hear from Washington.
© 2008
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