On Mar 27, 8:36*am, trad...@optonline.net wrote:
> On Mar 27, 2:24*am, z <gzuck...@snail-mail.net> wrote:
>
> > On Mar 16, 8:20*pm, wis...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > > On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:38:06 GMT, jazzerci...@hotmail.com (-) wrote:
>
> > > >http://halturnershow.blogspot.com/20...re-they-on-whi...
>
> > > >What planet are they on? White House says economy is "sound"
>
> > well, it's "sound" in the sense of "mechanical vibrations at a
> > frequency between 20 and 20,000 Hz transmitted by an elastic medium",
> > i.e. a bunch of empty verbal activity.
>
> > if they mean it's healthy, you could make an excellent case that the
> > economy has not been healthy since the oil shock of the 70s.
>
> Yes, you could say that, but it would be asinine. *If the US economy
> hasn't been healthy since the 70's, you might just as well say it's
> never been healthy.
>
> >300
> > million people selling each other their houses at ever higher prices
> > does not a healthy economy make no matter how much cheap chinese junk
> > it allows them to buy.
>
> As if that's all that's happened in the last 30 years. *Talk about
> looking at a cup as half empty....
>
>
>
>
>
> > i really hate it when i say something that agrees with something hal
> > turner said.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

well, this all my own impression, and i'm no kind of expert, but i
don't think too many folks will say that american fundamental
industries like manufacturing have been healthy for a while. our
economy has moved on to more ephemeral things. since the 1970s it's
been one bubble after another. southeast asia, savings and loans,
dotcoms, housing.

the real beginning of the end of cheap energy was the oil shock(s;
1972 and 1979) of the 1970s; the western governments bailed us out
with a lot of borrowing and a lot of delicate management of the
dollar/pound/mark/franc which prevented the kind of acute mess we are
in right now, but you can't scooch out a bulge in the wall to wall
carpeting without making a lot of little bulges. so, high interest
rates delivered us from stagflation, at the cost of a worldwide
recession in the early 80s. smaller US industries like appliances and
consumer electronics having already left town, now the ones that
couldn't move overseas like housing, steelmaking, automobile
manufacturing collapsed. Chrysler got pulled out of a death spiral by
Lee Iacocca, at the expense of GM losing a piece of the market equal
to the size of Chrysler.

lowered interest rates and more deficit spending pulled the economy
out of that hole, without restoring any of the american industries in
the now "rust belt". banks couldn't make money on financing industrial
production as they used to, and the ones who didn't fail started a lot
of speculative investments in real estate, casinos, junk bonds,
corporate raiders, junk bonds, derivatives and hedge funds. the less
regulated savings and loans industry collapsed when these investments
proved as risky as they really were, but the banks were insulated from
catastrophe by regulation, so they kept pushing that limit until it
got repealed recently, with well known results.

the late 80s brought the black monday stock market collapse; another
oil price shock from the gulf war led to stagflation again. the dotcom
boom carried us through the 90s; the triple related bubble collapses
of the asian economies and the dotcom and telecom bubbles brought that
down to earth, only to lead into the real estate bubble. and that
brings us to now.

on the other hand, the oil shocks taught the arab nations how to bring
the europeans to heel.