The Economic Disease Is Misdiagnosed

We saw the federal government, under the Bush II regime, repeatedly say "what symptoms, what economic problems" as the patient complained time and time again.

Then when the patient was driven into a paralytic state, we saw the Bush II regime administer its treatments once it saw the patient clearly suffering serious sickness.

Of course they misdiagnosed the economic disease they had spread, calling for some of that good old fashioned snake oil.

Their diagnosis was to give those who destroyed the economic lives of millions of Americans more of the public money for their casino gambling type of economics, rather that correct their behaviour.

The new doctor, the Obama administration, drunk on the hope/myth of "bi-partisanship" ("lets screw things up together") following on the heals of the champagne election, decided that more of the same medicine was the cure.

So they happily did more of the same, putting the public money into the stock market and other financial instruments through big belligerent banks.

Those big belligerent banks interpreted the therapy as treatment to help only them to more of the same, further impoverishing the people they took the medicine (public money) from.

The disease naturally got worse and then spread to the states.

Following on the economic disease of California, New York is showing the symptoms of the economic disease that is even threatening the largest states now:

Long before Gov. David Paterson delivered his annual report on New York’s condition on Wednesday, everyone knew that the state of the state was desperate. New York is crippled by a mounting budget crisis and saddled with a Legislature that is incompetent in its governance and corrupt in its behavior.

To his great credit, Mr. Paterson skipped the usual, and usually insincere, homages to his fellow politicians and went straight into an unsparing assessment of fiscal and political reality. He insisted that the Legislature attack economics and ethics at the same time.

“Cultures of addiction to spending, power and approval have ruined empires, and now they threaten the Empire State,” he said ...

(NY Times, emphasis added). When politicians speak the truth it is quite shocking, because our nation institutionalized deceit as the form of communication between government and the people long ago.

That is why the press is so shocked at the Governor's candor.

Treating serious national problems with propaganda pills is like giving sugar pills or snake oil to a patient who is gravely sick.

It is not only incompetent quackery, it is also very cruel.