re: "juicing the stock market is now considered Job #1 for the Federal Reserve Bank"

SEE:

Plunge Protection Team

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/blackm/plunge.htm

And:

"We have the responsibility to prevent major financial market disruptions through development and enforcement of prudent regulatory standards and, if necessary in rare circumstances, through direct intervention in market events".

-Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan at the Catholic University Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (January 14, 1997)

http://www.federalreserve.gov/Boarddocs/Speeches/1997/19970114.htm

re: "It will, however, get inflation jump-started...Nobody wants to talk about that."

Greetings, Master Yoda!

According to Alan Greenspan, the Fed will have to raise interest rates to double-digit levels in coming years to thwart inflation -- the very inflation they are helping to ignite!

Greenspan sees double-digit rates: report

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSN1728325720070917

Insofar as the latest rate cut, this will do zero to help the average consumer -- you know, the one upon whom this entire economy depends.

When the Fed first began raising interest rates, I got a nice letter from Capital One telling me that my credit card interest rates were going up 5% -- and I pay my bills like clockwork. I don't expect another letter telling me they're now lowering rates because of this latest move.

I'm also at a loss to understand the "Plunge Protection Team". I'm no economist, but it seems to me that propping up stocks does nothing but distort their actual value - kind of like the proposed schemes to keep people from defaulting on their mortgages on hyper-inflated homes. They'll still be in negative equity land and they'll still default whenever they have to move (or sooner, if they lose their job), because they can't sell it for what they owe.

Like the pumps on the Titanic, all of this financial smoke and mirrors may buy a little extra time, but it isn't going to change the outcome.

I'm heading for the lifeboats.

re: "vast and increasing debt, the loss of productive capacity, stagnant wages, and escalating income disparity"

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

The epitaph for the Bush economy.

P.S. I still read all your posts. You're hilarious! I can't quite remember that old line of yours about "you're so far out in left field your with the winos in the third parking lot..." Help!

:)

re: "The middle class is going to resent it, although I was mostly kidding about the heads on pikes."

The ruling class isn't taking any chances:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060819&articleId=3006

But I'm gonna screw 'em up by taping frozen pizzas all over myself! I'll have a slice of pepperoni while I stick their heads on pikes!

re: "Those were the days."

Ah, yes, when those idiots were still trying to convince themselves that crafty old Saddam had buried all those WMDs in his sandbox. Jesus, talk about shooting fish in a barrel...

But it was great fun, knowing we were (of course) right and that it was only a matter of time before their pathetic spin smacked up against the wall of reality.

In the present case, I sure wish we were wrong.

But we're not.

Well, time for me to hit the books.

Aloha from Hawaii. It's another beautiful sunset!

re: "we in America are fucked -- at least in our way of life"

Good. For far too long we have lived an utterly wasteful lifestyle of mindless consumption of disposable consumer goods, measuring "success" or "failure" by the ability to amass such piles of junk. We've been driven to early graves by the pressures of pursuit of the almighty dollar, our hearts polluted with greed and envy. We've managed all of this by stealing the resources of the rest of the world by force, beating our chests as we do so and salving our consciousness with crap about a "war on terror" or whatever is the latest rationale offered as the window dressing for our quest for global domination. So don't cry now that this unsustainable, spiritually empty lifestyle is drawing to a close. We now have an opportunity to become real human beings, instead of drones in a corporate money-making machine. We have a chance to learn that love is all that really matters and, yes, we do indeed depend upon our fellow man.

"The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis'. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity."

-John F. Kennedy

SEE:

Our Economic Dilemma

By Martin Feldstein (NBER)

Although it is too soon to tell whether the United States has entered a recession, there is mounting evidence that a recession has in fact begun. Key measures of economic activity stopped growing in December and January or actually began to decline. The collapse of house prices and the crisis in the credit markets continue to depress the real economy. (MORE)

http://internationalpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/our-economic-dilemma/

We don't want Iraq together again. What we want is permanent instability, giving us an excuse for all of those permanent bases we are building.

You'd think people would've figured out by now that our real and only interest is in controlling Iraq's oil reserves. The last thing we want in Iraq -- or anywhere else in the ME -- is a functioning democracy, because we'd be voted off the island pronto.

re: "the ways that women are driven into sex work because of economic hardship"

Unless a woman is kdnapped and literally forced into prostitution with a gun to her head, it's a choice. No one who is in their right mind and has even the most modest economic opportunities can be otherwise "forced" into prostitution -- or anything else.

Women will take one giant leap forward in their quest for equality when they stop playing the victim role and start taking full responsibility for their own actions.