Barging into ... What?

Well, we are well within the beginning of the year 2011. I have noted several unusual occurrences. One, I haven't written 2010 on any checks this year. That is real unusual. Of course I don't write many checks anymore, what with on-line banking, bill paying and such. The other, is that our economy is still in a spin and not looking any better in the near future.

Then there is our federal government. For the last year and even longer, they have assured us that the great recession was over in 2009. They lied. Given that some major causes of recession/deepression are lack of confidence, they apparently decided to artificially fix the problem by declaring it over. They lied.

Just yesterday, I read where employment is still above 9.5%. In the same vein, home foreclosures have doubled since last year, which of course was a year after normal was declared. In an article in the Spokesman Review, written by Kevin Graman, he noted that last year, they counted 644 homeless in cioeur d'Alene/Post Falls area alone. That is a 54% increase from the year before, which as we know, is the year the recession ended.

Over at the National Guard armory in Post Falls, 408 people had passed through the armory before noon, where they people could pick up a food box and clothing. Food banks are being overrun by hungry people that had never asked for help before.

Having the well fed Governors of the Federal Reserve buying bonds is just trading money from one pocket to the other, increasing the overwhelming national debt. Folks, this is about jobs, not money manipulations. Until organized labor has decreased their choke hold on wage scales nothing will change. In a global economy, wage scales in the orient and India are so low as to cause goods to reach our shores for much less than it would cost to manufacture them here, even with the transportation cost. Of course near slave labor used to be fought off by the judious use of import tariffs. A policy that has no friends in this country these days.

We can't have it both ways. Global trade, or jobs. These terms are mutually exclusive as long as labor in developing countries is less than 25% of our labor costs here. When I was a teen in the '50's, my neighbor on one side was a welder and the other a machinist, both at Boeing. They were not financially in the middle class. Now they are. Our economic system is severely broke and nobody is doing anything useful to correct the situation. Even our own air force can't figure out that creating jobs at Boeing is protecting our country as well as their primary mission. It has been reported recently they are still expected to favor the European Union Air Bus for the tanker contract. Bottom line, it appears that our government doesn't give a rat's ass about the individual that cannot any longer, support his or her family. Families are learning that global free trade isn't feeding or housing their family, jobs here do.