EconomicCrisis.US

How can we ease Americans’ financial pain and help “return the nation to a “full employment economy”? That’s a question with no easy answers, notes former President Bill Clinton — but government and business leaders can start truly addressing the economic crisis by “building a world of shared prosperity and shared responsibility,” he said during a speech at the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York Monday.

In his speech, Clinton offered up some wide-ranging prescriptions for curing the nation’s ailing economy, among them investing in new sectors for job growth — for example, retrofitting buildings so that they’re energy-efficient — supporting high-end manufacturing in the U.S., lowering the tax rate for businesses so they can reinvest in job creation, and “accelerating the resolution of the mortgage crisis” by helping people who owe more on their homes than they’re worth. One way would be to lower the principals on those loans to the value of the homes, he said.
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The world economy and with it social order are about to come flying apart. Environmental policies and environmentalists are contributing to the crisis by standing in the way of the wise use of fossil fuels to jump start economic productivity again.

Think about it. Greece is going to default any day, and there isn’t enough money in the European Union (EU) to respond to it. Germany is moving to the far right at the thought of having to bail out its extravagant neighbors. The welfare state as a functioning system is on the ropes in Europe at the very time that poverty, inflation, and high unemployment will be on the rise as the EU fails. First Greece, then Portugal, then Spain – the system has to fail, and when it goes down, the whole globe goes into a deep depression.
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The debt fight that played out in the nation’s capital this long, hot summer and the ensuing U.S. credit downgrade by Standard & Poor’s was the latest chapter of a painful story that began years ago.

In the 2000s, banks, homeowners and consumers became bloated on too much leverage, or borrowed money. The end result: a dramatic shrinkage of credit throughout the economy, a phenomenon known in economic circles as “deleveraging.”

It’s a situation the government and the Federal Reserve have been grappling with ever since, throwing trillions of dollars at the problem. Tuesday, the Fed’s policy committee is meeting to assess the current state of the economy. While last week’s July jobs report was slightly better than expected, the economy still isn’t adding enough jobs to keep pace with population growth.
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A crisis is brewing in America that reaches most of us in some way, but those who track it say it’s so politically touchy, neither party will tackle it.

It doesn’t involve abortion, immigration, gay rights or any of the usual hot-button issues. But if you want to see candidates clam up, ask how they would tackle what one expert calls American men’s “failure to launch.”

Unemployed at record rates, falling behind academically, socially and in earning power, American men are at a difficult crossroads.
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