by Ted Sherman

Created on: October 07, 2008   Last Updated: October 10, 2008

The U.S. economy isn't just in a recession. It's nosediving into a real depression! Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic leaders, and Chairman Barney Frank of the House Financial Services Committee held a simpering news conference last week following what they touted as the successful passing of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. The House vote was 263 to 171. Since their Bushlike "mission accomplished" boast, the stock market has lost an additional 1,000 points or more, and if the downward trend isn't stopped very soon, a full-scale depression of 1929 proportions will destroy the U.S. economy.

With the passage of the totally-ineffective economic bail-out bill, composed of patchwork and pork, for an outrageous $700 billion, the US Congress crossed the line from mere idiocy into total financial insanity. The bill did absolutely nothing but send the already reeling economy into uncontrolled panic.

It is a horrible example of our leaders' sheer lack of basic intelligence and their overwhelming greed, a deadly combination for the American taxpayers and a potential death blow to the nation's economy. Despite all the terrible news, the attitude among the politicians and Wall Street gamblers, all sitting on personal fortunes, is: I got mine, so to hell with you.

The President, busy with endless wars, and Congress, busy with endless pork, in their infinitely clueless mind-set, know the $700 billion fiasco won't work. It may be that they figure printing more money will be enough to take care of the problem. That's what the 1920s German government did after World War I, and soon people needed wheelbarrows full of cash to buy a loaf of bread. In the U.S. today, it hasn't yet come to that, but if you've been shopping recently, you know we're heading in that direction.

Of course, the line-up of the mud-splattered guilty doesn't stop in Washington. The fat cat oil executives, the fat-headed members of the New York Stock Exchange, banks, mortgage companies, along with greedy real estate speculators, are all criminally responsible for the economic disaster.

Many, if not all of them have committed criminal acts and should be prosecuted for deliberate offenses against their fellow citizens. If justice is to be served honestly, O.J. Simpson would soon have thousands of equally-guilty companions in his cell in Las Vegas. A long stretch in a Sin City jail would be an appropriate place for those sinners who gambled with our money, and salted away their money while losing ours.

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