There is a commenter at other blogs who is always anonymous but signs his comments "snuffy". He didn't see this post; his comments pertain to another dialog thread. His pain comes through clearly and his wisdom is to be taken seriously.

Your information about the hard times in the solar industry is noted...might be a good time to get whatever you can in the way of hard cells to squirrel away for the future...

I think we all have come to the conclusion that there is some kind of a shadow agenda in this administration...but to say that it is only "the banksters" best interest would be hard ,...or would it?. We will see...wont we? I think there is a serious miscalculation by those in power now of the degree of anger...[stone rage] at the system. This anger had one manefestation in the election. You can see another in the daily arrests of health care professionals trying to have their voices heard above the clamor of the "Money for Medicine" crowd. I think you will see more of this....and the level of rage will increase...until physical violence will be the norm.
That the doctors and nurses are leading the charge is wonderful..and frightening. They know how badly the system is broken,yet those running it are getting sooo wealthy they can not see any way of change. It will result in eventual failure of the entire system. Have your medicines,and your medical care [personal address and friendship with a physician]lined up,as its going to get worse...bad bad bad soon.
I have relaxed this morning and have had thom hartman on the radio.He has spent a lot of time spoon-feeding the economic theory to all of his listeners.

I sometimes wonder if voices like his will help at all to educate the average citizen to the massive screwing taking place as we speak,or if it will take the complete and utter destruction of the middle class ...and the poverty and want that will result before enough people understand that actions of those in power have badly hurt the lives of all of us,and will continue to as long as they have power.
Change will happen. But for it to help instead of hurt will take intelligent, dedicated people at the highest levels to have the common man's interest, instead of only the wealthy. The saying "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitible"is still true..and will be true regardless if the administration is democratic ,or republican. Here is a prediction. If it blows up on O-mans watch,[and most regulars here are fairly sure it will]full-blown martial law will go into effect so fast it will shock everyone.
Think about it...

If it really blew up, what would be the options? Let it all disintegrate? Do you think the powers that be want to live in a mad-max world?

What will be the effect if we have a continuation of a couple percent of the population becoming "underemployed" with the continuing loss of the ability to survive of another couple of percent...monthly? Its getting real bad folks real real fast,and I dont know if those in power understand that this is where you start to see young folk deciding logically and rationally to become criminals...and hookers@ 15...and so many wasted lives. Poverty does this. They are coming close to losing a whole generation of people who will never live to their potential...due to the greed and mis-management of those in power. And remember,they are all system savvy,and will have a distrust of .gov that will stick with them all their lives. The basic distrust of .gov I developed was due to Vietnam. This generation will see starvation of family. I had many long talks with my 94 year old grandmother about the last time it all broke down. About the starvation of a firstborn child in a soddy in Oklahoma. About her deep fear of what will come if we go there again. She is one sharp old bird,and knows people so well. I have come to listen to her carefully.

I don't know whats coming down. All I see is a continuation of the attempts to re-inflate a popped balloon...an attempt to save the monied class as the entire goal of a administration. All else is fluff. The actions they are taking will fail, and are "eating the seed corn"of the future.

No one would have believed that a black man would be president 2 years before the event.

I am positive no one would believe where we are headed...2 years from now the world will be a very very different place. And no one would believe now where we will be then...

Time to go "be productive"

snuffy

I will invite him to comment here and I hope he does. This is typical snuffy (reminds me of JV!).

The big however comes for people like pregnant women, sick kids, and swine flu preparedness. The UK has antivirals for 50% of the population and it will be covered under NHS. I have neighbors who require dialysis and some who have seizures who are taken care of, no questions asked. This is a good thing.
I do wish some of the more enthusiastic proponents of national healthcare could become familiar with the actual results. Those who think that their best friend would have survived their breast cancer if they had lived in the UK should think twice. An American would be appalled at the conditions I have encountered at various clinics and hospitals here.
There are trade offs when the taxpayer is supporting the medical system and the taxpayer goes broke. Even so, I think the NHS is a fairer system on the whole.

Isn't this the equivalent of me taking a life insurance policy out on each individual of an office building, and then locking the doors with everyone inside once there is a fire so that I can collect on those policies?

required temporary government expenditures to only stimulate the domestic economy from where those public funds (taxpayer dollars) originated. i.e. the income must be tied to U.S. citizens, U.S. workers (legal, perm residents) and not be pouring out to stimulate other national domestic economies.

Congress not only did not get the most bang for their buck in terms of creating income, which is the key element of Keynesian stimulus but they also refused to tie those jobs to the above...

hence, we get "green jobs" being created in India...with U.S. taxpayer dollars....we get illegals obtaining construction jobs....and remittances are huge, that's U.S. taxpayer money pouring out and on top of it continues wage repression due to oversupply of labor....

We have Indian Steel, Chinese Steel, now GM going to offshore outsource production, Caterpillar massively offshoring....

probably the worse, IBM, GE offshoring while getting billions in contracts....

and....Obama...putting key members of USINPAC in place in technology positions...they are not interested in U.S. labor, jobs....they promote India's agenda continually and have many vested interests promoting more offshore outsourcing as a business model.

This is beyond pathetic, to me it's criminal.

- anyone over the age of 35 is now labeled a dead wood idiot

- people are fired ad hoc, for nothing, there is no correlation to work performance vs. keeping one's job

- discriminatory interviews that are based on race and age, i.e. Indians only hiring other Indians for U.S. jobs.

- scapegoating, bullying in the work place, makes going to work seem like one just returned to junior high school

- demanding people work 60-80 hour weeks on "salary"

- being fired for simply getting sick

- discrimination against single mothers because they believe she will have to take off work more and have higher insurance costs

- general treatment of people as disposable commodities

Have we heard about the second half turn around. Eventually we will hit bottom, but this is only just getting underway.
So much damage done by the previous administration and the creation of a never heard before .. jobless recovery .
I think this is where Keynesian theory breaks down. Fiscal policy allowed the corruption, and extreme leverage that no "smoothing" is going to stop this correction.
The time to stop it was before it happened all they are going to do now is prolong the bottom from happening.

It has always been about class warfare.

I see U3 hitting at least 20% in Oregon in the next 3 months- you can't expect a teacher to retrain for construction to build bridges.
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Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

and if I fail I am not even a blip on the radar. My two sisters are 1099 people. One sisters husband is a Realtor and he is sitting with no sales basically unemployed but won't show up on any reports. I know many, many small subcontractors that haven't had work in almost a half year.

Robert, you are correct in wondering because we live/work in a different manner than we did at the time of the Great Depression.

to the Great Depression. Most of what I've read people are watching them getting closer but not there yet. I for one do rant a bit about how the general public doesn't even know U6 exists and the media doesn't help give out such information.

The great depression didn't have the long term effect of outsourcing jobs. It is something that is still marching forward and taking "green" jobs with it.