Finally got to actually watch the video. And I agree with Peter Schiff about the current state of the economy. Like I said, I watch homelessness. I see it everywhere. I'm kind of tuned into it. It's going from bad to worse and worse. And now it's not just older people but very young people who are on the streets looking so ashamed as they put their hands out. I feel so sorry for them. Some may be a bit crazy. Some may be on drugs, but they are people and in a better economy, their lives and their work would have some value and if there were no place for them in the working world, there would be help. But not now.
I am not as knowledgeable as he is, but I see the same problems -- and I recognized the boom as it was happening first in 1996-97 and as the housing boom during the Bush years built up.
I didn't think we ever really recovered fully from the dot.com crash.
But then, I had a view from the bottom up of the economy, from individuals' balance sheets, not the corporate balance sheets, from the paycheck stubs and the credit card statements of working people, not from the skyscrapers on Wall Street down.
And on top of that, I worked for a project to help homeless people. And the numbers of them at least since the late 1980s is a dead giveaway that the economy is not working for a lot of people.
Peter Schiff will probably disagree with me on this, but one of the reasons I support Bernie is that when the economy does crash, when interest rates finally rise and prices rise before or after that commensurately, I'm going to care about ordinary people, those kids who don't have jobs, the elderly who have no savings and can't earn enough to pay property taxes and buy food even when they do work. I'm going to care about people who are sick and suffering.
My tough luck. That's the way I was raised.
And Bernie is the only candidate, the only person with a big microphone in front of him who also really cares and who also somehow instinctively understands that our economy is a sham, that we cannot at this time afford another trade bill, that our military needs to be strong but to achieve that strength we have to make tough decisions about where the money goes and right now, nobody knows . . . . I could go on and on.
My priority is taking care of ordinary American people.
Wall Street got us into this mess. Wall Street, Greenspan, trickle down economics.
Peter Schiff talks about the problems with addiction. Well first we need to get rid of our addiction to oil and gas and coal. They are creating problems not just in the environment but in our economy. Then we need to have an honest accounting. That means breaking up the too-big-too-fail banks, and we need to take money from the rich and give it to the middle class and poor in America.
I know that suggesting redistributing wealth is considered to be subversive in America. But how else do you regain some semblance of balance in an economy as out of whack as ours without setting the stage for hunger, death and the violence those things ultimately mean.
Look at Syria. On Thom Hartmann today, I finally learned what really happened there. They had a drought. The farmers could not work their land and produce enough food to eat so they migrated to the city. In the city, they wanted food. They demonstrated for food, and Assad shot them for demonstrating. I may be the last person on earth to know that is what happened in Syria. Of course, there was a revolt. Unfortunately but not at all surprisingly to me, it was accompanied by an epidemic of extreme fundamentalism. Some fundamentalists are very rich, and some middle class, but in my experience the base in the fundamentalist movements regardless of religion are the poor and suffering who blame themselves and others for their predicament and have no one to turn to for help but whatever their ideas about God are. Of course, they are fundamentalists. Just like the right-wing Republican base in the US. All victims of life's worst injustices. All poor. All fundamentalists. And they do love their bigoted and very greedy Republican "leadership."
This speech is very, very depressing.
If our economy crashes in the next ten months, Bernie is going to be viewed as THE HOPE. I hope he is. He is a wise man. He will not be able to prevent the economic problems we are headed toward, but he will be able to respond to them in a just way.
Feel the Bern! And after that speech with its dismal prediction, I'm going to campaign for Bernie harder than ever.
At least Peter Schiff is telling the truth.
I have been saying here that as long as the interest rates are low it means our economy has not recovered. We see through the glass darkly . . . . and it is very dark at this time before the storm.
Sorry for the rant.
I just wish, wish, wish I did not agree with him. It breaks my heart when I think of more people losing everything and all the suffering it will bring with it.
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