by Bob Trowbridge

Created on: February 15, 2007   Last Updated: May 24, 2009

As we near the second quarter of 2009, the American economy is still dropping. Many of the mainstream media pundits are calling a bottom in the housing market. They don't seem to be aware that even more sub-prime loans are going to be reset in the second half of this year. This will increase the number of foreclosures and add to the already bloated inventory of houses for sale.

Unemployment continues to rise. No one can predict when it will level out. We are in a downward spiral. As unemployment increases, Americans have less money to spend. When we spend less money, unemployment increases. It will be some time before this aspect of the economy shows signs of recovery.

The government continues to go deeper into debt as it bails out the criminals who got us into this mess. The nation is already bankrupt. If the US survives, future generations will be paying for our mistakes for decades at least.

Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve and Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, continue to assure us that things are getting better and their strategy of printing money as fast as they can is rescuing the economy. They are essentially following the path that got us into trouble in the first place, obscenely low interest rates and extreme liquidity (printing more money).

The backlash of these irresponsible policies will be extreme inflation, possibly hyperinflation. Hyperinflation will be the result of the dollar becoming essentially worthless. Inflation has already acted as a hidden tax for working Americans. In real dollars, we are making the same income we were making in the mid-70s.

Most Americans don't understand how this economy works. Why should they? Some of the experts don't know how it works. Why should we have to become experts in the American economy in order to understand what is happening? Why can't we trust our congress and the executive to tell us what's going on? Why can't we trust our mainstream media to tell us what's going on?

There are some simple facts that we need to know if we are going to save this nation from ruin, not just financial ruin but social and moral ruin as well. Ronald Reagan championed the trickle-down view of economics. It was simple and outrageously immoral. He suggested that if we gave lots of money to the rich, they would spend that money, thus creating jobs. Wealth at the top would trickle down to those of us at or near the bottom and all would be prosperous.

George H.W. Bush called this Voodoo economics. What we have today

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