This 4th Of July, Americans Will Have Little To Celebrate About

Opinion by Gilbert Mercier, NEWS JUNKIE POST

The unemployment numbers yesterday were worse than expected. The national average is close to 10%, with many states suffering even more dire circumstances. America has not seen such a situation for 26 years.

Recently what passes for “good news ” is just news that are not utterly catastrophic. We went from losing 700,000 jobs a month to a more “reasonable” 500,000. Not only do Americans need jobs, some are also in the process of losing the roof  over their heads. The real estate market is still flooded with a record  inventory of foreclosures in most of the country. This is true, not only for the epicenters of the real estate meltdown such as California, Nevada and Florida, but it applies nationwide. In Detroit Michigan, one can buy a house for 15,000 dollars, it would cost 3 times this amount only in materials.

The situation is so bad at the State level that California is officially insolvent, and is now issuing IOU’s to its creditors instead of payments, other States are facing a similar situation.

Despite President Obama’s stimulus package, we are still in the middle of what economists are calling the “Great Recession”. Republicans are inclined to blame President Obama and the Democrats for it, and this could not be more inaccurate. The eight years of incompetent management by the Bush administration, and their complete lack of foresight in anticipating the global meltdown, is the main cause of our current predicament. For a nautical analogy here, I would say that President Obama took the helm of the Titanic after “Captain Bush” crashed the ship into the iceberg and left in a hurry. It was pretty much the situation when President Obama was inaugurated in January, we were not even at the edge of a cliff, we only had one foot resting on firm ground.

This 4th of July, many towns will not be able to celebrate America’s birthday with the traditional fireworks. They can not afford them. Many Americans don’t have a jobs, and will not have much to put on their barbecues. Many others can’t pay their bills, and others don’t even have a roof over their heads any longer.

However, Americans are resourceful and, if they stick together, they should be able to overcome this very rough patch just like they did in the 1930’s during the Great Depression. Regardless, just imagine how much worse our situation would be if the dynamic duo McCain/Palin had won the election.