Plunderbund

As Congress continues work on a plan to stimulate the US economy and the Federal Reserve considers even more aggresive interest rate cuts - it’s obvious that we are headed toward an inevitable recession and something needs to be done about it.

Everyone has finally pulled their heads out of the sand- everyone except Matt Hurley over at WMD- who continues to insist that the US economy is going strong and that George Bush’s tax cuts are a success.

I understand why he might still believe the economy is strong- George Bush, despite all of the evidence against him, has been saying it for 7 years now.

The thing is, George Bush has also insisted that Iraq had WMDs, Saddam Husein supported terrorists and that global warming isn’t happening. And he eventually had to give up and tell the truth about all of these issues.

And so it is with the economy as well.

George Bush has finally recognized the problems with the US economy and has signed-on to the economic stimulus package being prepared by congress. Unfortunately, like the rest of The Decider’s decisions, this one might just be too late.

The problem with George and Matt and the rest of the wingnuts is not just that they are slow to act- it’s that they simply lack perspective i.e. “the faculty of seeing all the relevant data in a meaningful relationship.”

They latch on to a couple of positive numbers floating around out there (e.g. a 5.2 percent increase in manufacturing orders for December) but fail to see how bleak the overall picture has become (e.g. orders for the year were up only .97 percent - a huge drop from the 6.31 percent increase in 2006).

Don’t mistunderstand my intention here- I’m not trying to highlight our nation’s economic woes in an attempt to place blame on Bush’s economic policies (i’ll save that for another post).

Blame aside, things are bad right now- on that almost everyone agrees- and things are only going to get worse as long as the rest keep denying there is a problem.

Faith in the economy isn’t going to help us out of this one, boys, no matter how much we pray or hope. You can’t ignore the problem just because it hasn’t impacted you yet. By the time it does- it may very well be too late to do anything about it.

Like any other problem- you have to admit it’s there before you can start solving it.