Recession Deja Vu all over again

I admit that financial collapse was not my first thought when the Russians helped Doughface Donny steal the election. It was probably fourth or fifth, after the giant tax cuts and deregulation, anti-immigrant punitive cruelty, imprisonment of dissenters at all levels, wars, and the legalization through non-prosecution of white supremacists for acts of terror they regularly commit. But now, just in time for the next election it is as The Onion put it:

Financial Sector Thinks It’s About Ready To Ruin World Again

The first serious inkling I got of recession is this article from Axios dated April 5, 2019 on the decade high number of layoffs over a first quarter of the fiscal year. The economy is always churning jobs around, creating here, destroying there, shuffling rotten and incompetent executives from one golden parachute to another. When the legacy media reports on all the fantastic job growth are they commenting on the net growth, raw numbers of new jobs, the fun trick of turning one full-time family supporting job with benefits into two or more part-time or contract/freelance/on demand ones, or what? You have to dig pretty deep into each report to find out. But unemployment isn't even the biggest contributor to triggering a crisis.

I foolishly neglected to post and comment on the story from NPR that hit the alarm over the Inverted Yield Curve at the time. Looking it up now shows that it was originally posted on March 22 and the professor interviewed for the story said the time to start worrying was when yields remained inverted for 3 months. The inversion caused a drop of 460 points on the DJIA that day, and the Washington Post today has a reassuring article for retirees and boomers nearing retirement to stay in the market or something even though it mentions that the same index dropped 800 points on August 14th. Yes, of course recessions are a regular part of the business cycle, how else do you scare the hell out of everyone and stifle wage growth while keeping workers insecure?

Another page I follow "Defeat 'Right to work' in Wisconsin" posted a story that I shared from NBC about the 800 point DJIA drop, "the worst of the year" (let's get used to that phrase shall we?), they included the comment "The economy is overdue for its regular 10-year capitalist crisis, where the rich get richer and working people pay the price". It's basically theater by now, tax cuts unleash a new wave of unproductive capital for ever-more-risky speculation, some kind of bubble builds, crash, the banks and everyone with a lobbyist rushes to the republican government for handouts while blaming workers and the poor, rinse and repeat. This time we get to throw in concentration camps, trade wars, and gun-suckling jackasses unleashing mass murder into the witches' brew of capitalist excess and incompetence.

I added the comment to that post:

I have speculated that the 2008 crisis brought on by the republicans and their corruption didn’t hit early enough for the f#*kin’ boomers to get it through their thick skulls what actually caused them to delay retirement. The media letting republicans off the hook didn’t help either. This time we are strong enough to stop them when the put on funny hats and screech about socialism. #burnthelifeboats

People were all kinds of worried in the first Dubya recession of 2001 after Enron and the fun accounting abuses broke so many boomers' 401ks and caused so many people about to retire to stay on, thus denying young people any chance to get established before the really big goddamn crash in 2007. Collapse is so frequent and severe now that we don't really get to sympathize with people who lost everything. At least no one believes the "end of history" nonsense around Y2K that the rules were now suspended and you can have your cake and eat it too. Lavish yourself with vacations, expensive cars, and such because the market will always go up, you don't have to save much at all for your kids' educations or retirement. HAHAHA, yeah hopefully fewer people in the 21st century are thinking that.

It seems almost fitting that Doughface Donny has run the scandal machine at such a breakneck pace to make it feel like he's been in office for going on 8 years instead of 4. The same WaPo article predicted that the recession will really hit in 2021, just in time for President Warren or Sanders (or whoever, just please not trump) to clean up the mess with Moscow Mitch and every republican traitor screaming for their head while obstructing every proposal to fix this republican recession. I hope I'm wrong, please let me be wrong this time.

Back in July of 2016 when I had this weird little hope that somehow reason and decency would overcome republican and Russian sedition and treason, I wrote a post about "what do you want for Christmas" in the vain hope that a Clinton administration could smash through one big progressive item before Moscow Mitch slammed the door. It seems so quaint now, that maybe we could get a financial transactions tax passed and finally start to dry up some of this speculative capital that sloshes around global markets and always ends up capsizing the economy's boat. If only. If only. We will never know. Just as we will never know how American history would be different if say, Reagan's operatives hadn't convinced the Ayatollah's operatives that they could get a better deal for the American hostages if they were dealing with a Reagan administration. It would possibly have set off an entirely different course if Carter had been re-elected.

First, the tax cuts that were lavished on capital the first time would not have happened, at least not in the way they did. Energy conservation and research on renewables vs. digging for more oil. Perhaps the Fairness Doctrine would not have been abolished and decent society would be spared Limbaugh and hate radio plus the eventual establishment of Roger Ailes GOP TV. Regulations of all sorts that kept guardrails on society and industry would not have been destroyed. Nor would the entire anti-government, anti-politics conservative movement bent on authoritarianism have blossomed from all of Reagan's tall tales from the Oval Office. I know, Carter didn't really deserve reelection. And we can't do anything about how screwed up the past is. How do we use the lessons of the past then, to insulate ourselves as best we can from the coming disaster?

It's still so early, specifics won't come up right away. But, we can tighten our belts and refuse to listen to the mainstream pundits when they scream at us to buy stuff to prop up demand. No, forget it, my extra latte or subscription to something isn't going to save anything. We all need to reevaluate our needs and cut the extraneous stuff. Maybe cancel Netflix and try getting a movie from the public library, find your local farmers' market or cooperative, read a book instead of going to a ball game or a concert, learn to cook, hold off on buying a new car and pay down debt instead. Who knows how awful things are going to get, it may come to getting an extra roommate or boarder. Whatever you can do to limit your exposure and not get caught flat-footed will help. Start small, hopefully little measures here and now will add up when the shit hits the fan.

The stock market tanking is just an excuse for the top 1% to wreck our lives. Sure, there's all sorts of economic theory behind that statement but that is the result, imaginary speculative markets finally collide with reality and let the layoffs and foreclosures begin! Protecting yourself to the extent you can is first. Reminding your stupid republican relatives that they brought this on themselves is second. And finally, use the means at our disposal, social media, and any comment section to hold the media accountable when they make excuses for the past and all the ways republicans have led us to this point. They cannot let the traitorous republicans off the hook this time or it will be teabags all over again.