Anyone been listening to Thom Hartmann lately ranting about the economy?

[Postman]

When he talks abou tthe economic situation with some RW guest he mentions how we're headed for the "worst recession in a generation" or "another republican great depression"...

I hope Thom's opinions, especially regarding the "great depression" part, are super-hyperbole.

[patrice]

1. Hartmann's main source on matters of Economics is

http://www.ravibatra.com/

[Political Heretic]

2. I don't.

I don't want people to suffer. But something must shake us out of our insanity. Historically, if you look at the countries depressionary periods (yes there was more than the "great" depression) they are inevitably times where the people break out of the "me first and screw everyone else" attitude and begin to think about community and social solutions to community and social wide problems.

Most of the most progressive eras followed periods of economic crisis - its the only thing that can jar such a materialistic culture out of is malaise.

[patrice]

3. I don't know why Batra's newest book isn't listed on the link I gave above, but

it's for sale on Amazon and it's called The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos and I think he agrees with you that there is something important that we have to learn, the hard way unfortunately, but ultimately the learning will be good for us.

[Political Heretic]

7. Wow what a great title! You've piqued my interest.

Going to check that book out now.

[Hannah Bell]

8. I think he also predicted depression in 1999. I like his analysis,

but his forecasting record isn't great.

I think his earlier book was "The Depression of 99" or something similar.

[patrice]

4. P.S. I've been listening to Hartmann for a couple of years now.

He's my favorite.

[femrap]

5. I believe Thom is right....

the Greed is super-hyperbole and it will be stopped...AGAIN.

I hope everyone gets their houses in order...it is going to get nasty.

[Greyhound]

9. Maybe this time we'll get it right.

We simply have to attach our nation's currency to something real, and remove the profit potential from essential goods and services. Returning the status and purpose of corporations to that before the fraudulent declaration of corporate "personhood" is, I think, another good idea.

[femrap]

16. Yes, the Corporation is a root

cause of the mess we find ourselves.

Do you read Solari? Austin-Fitts was talking about gold the other day. I found the article via CarolynBaker.org It was a speech she gave at GATA in DC. Worth a read.

[Bozita]

6. Been listening since he replaced Mike Malloy on ieamericaradio

I fear Thom's on target.

[notesdev]

10. don't get your hopes up

a "great depression" scenario may look optimistic by the time all is said and done here... people don't understand how thoroughly our economy has been screwed up by the real estate bubble. I would not be terribly surprised to see the federal government as the owner of a full third of our national housing stock at some point.

[Fumesucker]

12. That won't happen...

The Feds simply don't have the funds for such a bailout..

If they try to just print the money, it will make things even worse.. That scenario could well end up looking like the Wiemar Republic.

As Roseanne once quipped: We are so far beyond broke that the light from broke won't reach us for ten billion years.

[notesdev]

13. It's already in the works

Mortgage buyers defaulting en masse... those properties go to the banks. But the banks are severely undercapitalized, can't resell the properties for anything near the value of the mortgages they held, and many banks themselves will go under, leaving the Treasury holding whatever assets can be liquidated from them. Printing money might be part of the cleanup, but there's not a thing it can do to stop the unfolding train wreck - no matter how much money is made available, nobody wants to lend and nobody who wants to borrow can borrow. They can print all they want; there are no takers at any reasonable asking price.

[krispos42]

11. I'm working through the backlog of him from iTunes

I'm on August 10, 2007 right now. Much of what he was talking about 8 months ago is coming true. He even mentioned Bear Sterns directly sometime in late July.

He was talking about the 1.3 trillion dollars of US debt that the Chinese were threatening us with, too.

I'd love it if he was wrong, but I don't think he is. :-(

[Mojambo]

14. Thom's a sharp guy and he's far from the only one predicting the "worst recession in a generation"

[dbt]

15. K & R

And a reminder that we're getting nowhere near the whole picture on the economy from the Media Borg.