How did unemployment grow to such devastating levels? The short answer is that, for decades, America’s been moving from economic bubble to bubble, and now, there are no more bubbles to save us. The Reagan-era unemployment, which was as bad as ours, was cured by the mass migration from manufacturing to service-sector jobs, moving from tradesman to hamburger-flippers, from longshoremen to checkout clerks. Later we were rescued from the recession of the early '90s by the dot-com boom, which busted just as the last decade’s real estate explosion took hold. The bill for that came due in September 2008, and here we are, in desperate need of magic bullets.
So what’s America’s next angle? How can Obama create the 300,000 jobs per month needed to put us back to work? There is no angle, no quick buck, no scheme to satisfy the big investors’ needs to make tons of money, but at the same time, make tons of money. You see, private equity doesn’t care much about jobs. Only we do. And to become secure again, Americans will have to build things, make things, repair and invent things. We needs jobs that are part of a manufacturing chain, a process requiring research and development, design, manufacturing, production and shipping, industries that create many types of jobs, not just employing a few stuffed shirts to fiddle with computers and spreadsheets. Are investors keen on that? Not really. Investors will reply that the days of secure industries with a multi-faceted production chain, are gone forever. Gone, they say. We are, as the Brits put it, redundant. Not needed. Outmoded.
But that’s wrong. It’s the instant-profit economy that’s outmoded, the notion that you can build an economy on a ponzi scheme. We’re Americans. We don’t need to turn over the reins to people who think like Bernie Madoff. We can invent and manufacture things that the world needs, be fully employed, and quite proud of ourselves.
[url=http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/07/05/corporations-sitting-on-1-84-trillion-cash/]http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/07/05/corporations-sitting-on-1-84-trillion-cash/[/url]
[url=http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/why-banks-still-are-not-lending.aspx]http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/why-banks-still-are-not-lending.aspx[/url]
[url=http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124019360346233883-lMyQjAxMDI5NDIwMDEyOTAzWj.html]http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124019360346233883-lMyQjAxMDI5NDIwMDEyOTAzWj.html[/url]
[url=http://alhambrainvestments.com/blog/2010/02/16/big-banks-sitting-on-cash/]http://alhambrainvestments.com/blog/2010/02/16/big-banks-sitting-on-cash/[/url]
[url=http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/for-credit-markets-one-day-doesnt-make-a-trend/]http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/for-credit-markets-one-day-doesnt-make-a-trend/[/url]
[url=http://www.marketwatch.com/story/jp-morgan-says-banks-loading-up-on-cash-2009-12-01]http://www.marketwatch.com/story/jp-morgan-says-banks-loading-up-on-cash-2009-12-01[/url]
Sara P. Miller
