The Rigged Game: Corporate America and a People Betrayed

Based on my book The Rigged Game: Corporate America and a People Betrayed, I made several predictions in September 2007. One of them was that a recession would occur sometime between the autumn of 2007 and the summer of 2008. That prediction has obviously come true, but it wasn't that big of a deal when you consider I made that prediction in the autumn of 2006. All recessions follow the same patterns as outlined in my book, and it was obvious that we were on our way to another one two years ago.

I wrote several articles about the coming recession along with my predictions, and not even the good liberals at http://www.alternet.org/, http://www.commondreams.org/, or Amy Goodman's website were willing to publish it.

Now here is where things become more interesting. I predicted this recession would be at least as bad as the downturn of 1981-82 based on the horrible job creation machine under the Republican Bush administration, the decline of family income, the continued transfer of income and wealth from working people to the rich, and the likely bursting of the housing market. The recession of the early eighties was the worst since the Great Depression. This current crisis will beat it thanks to Republican Party economics.

In September 2007, a conservative wealth manager asked me to write some of my predictions. I said we were heading into a recession; the Dow Jones could drop below 8,000 and possibly even 6,000. The Dow fell below 8000 today, October 10, 2008.

I also wrote the economy will flirt with, and possibly fall into deflation. Inflation is cooling, signaling the coming of deflation. If the economy moves into it, the result will be the worst business downturn since the Great Depression, and possibly as bad as parts of that.

By the way, in September 2007, I predicted the unemployment rate would rise to between six and twelve percent. We hit 6.1 percent two months ago.

One final note; this is a Republican created recession. It has been brought about the work of its elites to transfer more and more income and wealth from working people throughout the world to their base, "the have and the have mores." Their proposals to fix their problem are foolish.

Right now there are crack head intellectuals working for the Republican Party trying to place the blame for the housing meltdown on a small, poverty stricken community organizing group called ACORN. Barack Obama has tenuous and distant ties to that organization. So obviously the current recession has been caused by Obama and ACORN according to these intellectual crack heads of the Republican Party.

Don't Blame ACORN: Bernanke, Paulson, Bush and the Republicans are Making All the Wrong Moves

Bernanke, Paulson, Bush: Making All the Wrong Moves

It’s obvious by now that the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Teasury Secretary Henry Paulson have made all the wrong moves. Lot’s of people (including yours truly, see http://john-hively.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html) said it wouldn’t help the economy when Paulson asked congress to approve that $700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout two weeks ago.

Paulson, Bush and Bernanke can throw $10 trillion at the financial markets and that’s just good money following bad because the liquidity of the credit markets isn’t the problem with the economy. These guys are idiots who think we might be heading into a recession if this credit liquidity problem persists.

First of all, we’ve been in a recession since at least November of last year. Second of all, the problem we have today is that so much wealth and income have been taken from the poor and the middle class through legislation and the financial markets that the demand for goods and services has become slack. Most of this legislation, such as free trade agreements, provide incentives for corporations to ship middle class jobs to low wage countries, hurting the demand sector.

Republicans have demanded these income transfer programs for forty years and they’ve gotten what they desired: a massive transfer of income and wealth to President Bush’s self-proclaimed base of “the have and the have mores. That’s who the Republicans (and many Democrats) serve.

Of course, we can’t fail the Republican push to mention the deregulation of financial and real estate markets. Does the name Republican Senator Phil (the whiner) Gramm ring a bell?

Let there be no mistake; this economic disaster is the creation of the Republican party and its failed ideologies.

But this complete failure has them foolishly looking at other excuses.

This morning Bill O’Reilly hosted some Republican moron on his radio show who insisted this financial calamity should be laid at the feet of a small community organizing group called ACORN. Apparently, Bill is dumb enough to believe Republican claims that this group caused this multi-trillion dollar catastrophe. No other claim to blame could be more stupid.

In the meantime, Bush, Bernanke and Paulson will continue to throw good money after bad in useless efforts to save Wall Street and the financial system from itself, and that poverty stricken ACORN group. How totally stupid!

That means we’re going to need a Democratic president and congress to rectify this situation in January.