I also received a response.

I think some people will be refinancing their homes or getting a workout on their mortgage and will have more money in their pockets. Some will receive a bit of help from the stimulus jobs. Some will just return to jobs when their employers see sales increasing.

None of these are surprising or new. This is just how the economy works and grows. What we also know is the economy was zooming along at a faster rate in the recent past and there’s little doubt it can return to that level of activity. The only question is what would prevent it from returning very very quickly. What would prevent it?

Well, financial sector activity certainly is bouncing back fast, but there are fewer banks and it’s overall size *is* likely to be smaller. But, will it suffice to ensure capital to the real economy? I don’t see why not.

The one thing I can imagine which would really endanger a fairly quick return to real activity is oil prices. It’s at about $2.08/gal now and nobody has been thinking a lot about it recently. Where is it likely to go and why? Nail that down and I see no reason the economy can’t return to it’s recent normal level of activity very quickly.

We must ensure, however, during the less-than-full-activity time that our safety net stays strong to keep people from falling so far off the cliff that they won’t be able to bounce back.

Credit Card companies aren’t making money because of the spread. They’re making money because Republican controlled legislatures in the states in which card companies incorporate themselves have, in Dick Cheney’s quaint phrase, taken the gloves off lenders.

Those legislatures are refusing to regulate, which means anything goes. Card companies are making money via a government subsidized regulation-free zone, paid for by the taxpayers who elected those same legislatures. Except that those legislators don’t seem to be doing their constituents any favors; they’re all going to the card companies.

That’s a situation that screams for federal regulation of credit card companies, who operate nationally and internationally, not locally.

Yes, writing to our representatives is important!

Thanks,
Bob in HI

Elizabeth Warren is facing the same challenge as Brooksley Born in the mid-1990’s. Robert Rubin etal. are still running interference for Wall Street in D.C. at the direct expense of Main Street.

With the DHS invoking a public health emergency, we see how government can respond to an identified threat to the nation. Unfortunately the financial crisis is just the opposite. Not only is the threat deliberately misidentified and countermeasures misapplied, as Warren has repeatedly asserted, but the trillions in federal debt continue to be transferred into the hands of the same bad faith players that precipitated this catastrophe in the first place.

So while they steal future taxpayers blind, their only high yield profit center in the real economy today is outrageous, usurious interest rates on over a trillion dollars in consumer credit card debt. We are far over the cliff of national income against total debt service.

When there’s a cold going around the executive board rooms and some mild sneezing in D.C. committee hearings, the middle class is struck down with Swine Flu.

I’m feeling pretty disgusted as “Bush Regime Tortured (delete) Swine Flu is about to kill us all… by LS” in the Gazette is so damn accurate a prediction. I’m kinda wondering if Negroponte was along on Obama’s recent visit to Mexico. Add me to the pitchfork crowd — I’m the one wearing the tinfoil hat. –kj

America, as the geopolitical entity it once was, is over.

While that’s harsh and painful news for anyone (myself included) who’d managed to make a life in the world the way it was, the upside is that since the old thing is effectively dead we have the opportunity – and we have no choice anyway – to build a new and better society that honors not just a few, but all.