The Great Recession.

Lo these many months (over a year now) we have been enthralled in a recession (TARP and the Stimulus package barley saving us from a Depression) caused by Neo-Liberal policies of deregulation, espoused by Ronald Regan, Thatcher, Bill Clinton, formerly Alan Greenspan, Milton Friedman (may he burn in hell), Von Hyack (the same for him) and both George Bush's. Over the last 30 years this constant push for deregulation with the added effect of the erosion of Labour has gutted the physical economy. The destruction of Labour and the weakening to almost complete death of the Labour movement can be laid solely at the feet of Ronald Regan. Regan's lasting legacy will forever be that he killed the only hope for the American worker by breaking the Unions, its been over 30 years since Saint Regan (of the Wack-Job Republican Church) was elected president, and unions have still not seen a recovery. As of right now union membership nation wide is at 12 percent ( a half a percent increase from 2008), of which 80 percent of that are government employees. Union membership in the private sector is almost nil, what is even worse is that using his authoritarian populism Regan helped sell the American people on the idea that unions were bad, even though we enjoy the (alleged) eight hour work day because of unions, workers compensation, sick leave, safety regulations, pensions, retirement funds and so many other things that we enjoy in our modern work place because of unions and the labour struggle, which had we left it to pure free market capitalism we would never have. But thats part of the problem that deserves its own post, but be sure that a lot of our economic woes can be traced back to the erosion of labour, the destruction of the middle class and an increase burden on the working class. But this is a topic I will return to at a later date, what I want to talk about today is the lack of a New Deal.

Now I'm a Socialist (its a dirty word here in America, but its what I'm)and I'm for the working class owning the means of production, that the workers can be their own boss (in my view unionization plays heavily into the ability to do this) and one thing that has always made me sad is that FDR and the New Deal "stole the thunder" of the Socialists and the Left in America in the 30s which is one of the reasons we don't have a major Labour Party here in the US. But where I would prefer a full blown Socialist system, I would be more than happy (and part of me prefers) to have a Social Democratic system here in the US like they have in Europe (I say part of me would prefer this over some of my more Marxist tendencies because its more easily defensible since its proven to work in Europe). So one of the reason that I voted for Barack Obama in November of 2008 was I thought we were going to get a Newer Deal. Should I have known better, perhaps, Obama didn't present himself as anything other than just a regular run of the mill "centrist" Democrat, now besides the self projection that more than a few of us on the Left cast on President Obama, there were some clues that he would behave in a manner befitting the New Deal. In December of 2008 Lawrence Summers, who would be the Obama administrations highest ranking economist said

Many experts,believe that unemployment could reach 10 percent by the end of next year.” In the face of that prospect, he continued, “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.

So its no wonder that many of us saw a Newer Deal coming, but we have not seen that coming, in fact we've seen the opposite, the sort of actions that FDR took in 1938 when he tried to balance the budget and cut off some New Deal Programs caused the Nation to slip into a recession (Republicans dubbed it the Roosevelt Recession, proving that although they love associating their enemies with bad things, since he was following the advice of Republicans at the time when he tired to balance the budget, but also at one time the Republicans were witty and smart enough to use alliteration). as of right now November 2009 official unemployment is at 10.2 percent, with the unofficial as high as 18-20 percent. So its surprising (more like depressing) when I see President Obama say this in an interview for Fox Noise "It is important though to recognize,that if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession". New York Times economist in his most recent article had this to say in response

What? Huh?

You can read the full article here http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/opinion/23krugman.html?_r=1 (a warning you may have to register to read the article, but its free to register for the New York Times so its not really a problem)

I happen to agree with Mr. Krugman, that more needs to be done. Its good that the Obama administration has been looking into the creation of Green Jobs, but these are jobs that are yet to come, its good to see President Obama looking forward but there are concerns and problems that need to be reached now, beyond the alleged "shovel ready" projects that are underway. I envision an actual New Deal, a new NRA (National Recovery Administration), a new TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and the entire alphabet soup of New Deal programs, the creation of more trails in parks, pay struggling artists and musicians, poets and architects to create more beautiful things. Find historians and history majors and pay them to write new histories, even if you have to pay someone to dig a hole and someone else to fill it in, it will get people working and that is the only way were going to recover. In a capitalist system that we live in thats driven by consumer culture, unless your consumers have money that can be spent to drive the economy forward, nothing will happen. It has come once more for us to "Prime the Pump" in order to get the economy fixed, and damn the debt, that can always be paid off later when the economy stabilizes. Jobs Now!